The Parent Syndrome

This weekend was good, which makes it worth the long week--there wasn't much to be done in the later part of the week, except dread the following week and count the days until the long weekend, but having nothing to do made the week creep by. Sure I could have worked on my papers, read some of my books, redecorated my room, all the things that you do when you are bored, so I could have done (& just what I did do incidentally) nothing. "I'm letting the words marinate in my brain." I convinced myself, dwelling on them in their unconscious form, waiting for that "AH-HA!" moment where I will sit down and churn out the paper. That moment never quite came. So now, as the busy week is approaching, I am frantically pushing words out the ends of my fingers trying to make sense of the world inside my head.

But, this weekend, as I made less and less sense of the world that only I can see, I did manage to find time to venture out into the "normal" world. The picture to the right displays some of my humble findings, all of which I paid less than 5 dollars for, while my friends and I rummaged through bins at Goodwill and towers of books at the Winter Haven Library.
The Rundown:
*The Pelican Guide to English Literature: free
*Perks of Being a Wallflower; Chbosky: $1.00
*Splintering; Eireann Corrigan: $.50
*The Natural; Bernard Malamud :$1.00
*Best American Nonrequired Reading 2005:$.75
*American Literature 1914-Present: Free

Also while we were walking around Winter Haven, we found an antique store, chock-full of great trinkets and baubbles. I had forgotten how much fun it was to go antiquing. Of course, once you've seen one (or 200 in Lauri's case), you've seen them all, but it was a delightful way to spend a Saturday with friends.

When we returned back to campus, we put our treasures up, changed our shoes and hopped back in the car for a quick drive to the lake where there was a Hispanic festival. We didn't stay for long, because it was rather dark, but I was there long enough to see one of my students from an ESOL field study class get arrested. That was heart breaking, to know his story and see how hard his teacher fought for him, to try to help him rise above his role models at home, and then to see him being lead away with his hand behind his back. Something I was told in an education classes was, "You cannot save them all, Charlotte" but I still want to, I don't want to see their mug shot in the paper or read their obituary.

Which brings me to the point of this blog, I have dealt with many different types of parents: the parents who dictate everything in their children's lives, the parents who have nothing to do with their children, the parents who live vicariously through their children, the parents who honestly try to encourage and help their children think through their decisions and support their conclusions. I am thankful that my parents are the last example, through the years, we have had our ups and downs, but lately, we have become friends who give each other honest whole-hearted counsel. They have always been behind my dreams, and have done everything in their power to push and equip me to reach them. It wasn't until this semester that I was glad my parents are the way they are.

C

Sufjan Stevens: For the Widows in Paradise; For the Fatherless in Ypsilanti

As I come to the end of a rather perfect day, I am sorting it all out. From the homework--the lists of papers, the thoughts of the test: Richard III and Merchant of Venice (character roles and law versus spirit), the meetings scheduled, the chapel service; I'm trying to hash out everything and find the meaning of the day, the thoughts that should be dwelt upon.

Thoughts:

1. Worship for me is a time to seek intimacy with God, and at the moment, I find I can draw closer to God in a quite, no frills environment. I have no problem with people who worship differently, as long as they are worshiping God and not merely making a spectacle of themselves.

2. God doesn't have to be written in my writing for God to be there. If I write my heart, and if God is active in my life, then God will be in my writing regardless. There will be Hope and Love and Mercy and Grace and Righteousness without my trying to work those blessings into words.

3. Mercy and Compassion should be shown always, because they are the keys to our salvation.

4. "The evil that men do lives after them, but the good is oft interred with their bones." Julius Caesar

5. "Let us not seek to satisfy our thirst for freedom by drinking for the cup of bitterness and hatred. " I Have a Dream

6. It's the little things that make life special.

Grace to you all,

C.

Hindering the feelings of emotion

"You've become a monster to keep THE MONSTER from breaking you."

There are things in this world, that cause my heart to break: hunger, loneliness, shallowness, greed, despair, hate, etc. Sometimes I think it should be considered perjury to give recognition to such things. They hurt others so much. They hurt their host so much. Rendering them incapable of feeling, robbing them of what it is to be human. Stealing their joy. Thieving their peace and contentment. Swelling their bellies with despicable lies, empty falsehoods. Leaving the husks of dissatisfaction, self-loathing, irrepressible longing. NOTHING.

Ordinary Dialogue

From Chapter One: Death Will Bring Us Back to God.

Then the August of the year I turned twelve, I did. My grandmother went home. 60 years spanned between us, I was born on her wedding anniversary, on Easter Sunday. She called me her Easter present from God. Everyday after school I would go to her house, eat a pudding or drink an Ensure with her, and we would talk. She would tell me about how she had helped Billy Graham plant a church. When she told about her brother Baldus and the car made that only had a frame, which they would ride from their front door all the way to the bottom of Eagle Mountain, I laughed and wished that I had been there. I was haunted when she told me how her youngest brother Glen had lost his life while strapped to the Gunner’s chair onboard the U.S.S. Arizona during Pearl Harbor. I thought how lonely to sink to the bottom of the ocean--no wonder that the man who was feeding Glen’s gun bullets had shot himself later for leaving his friend there to die alone, helpless.

My grandmother was a smoker; she smoked almost everyday of her life from the time she was seven, when she took her first draw in the coat closet of her little country school. I remember the day she died; my dad came to get me. I knew she was sick, she had been on oxygen for almost six months. Her lungs were charred by the years taking in smoke and had been filling with mucus for a while.

When she found out she was dying, she stopped smoking, as she had tried to do when I was five and seven and nine and ten and eleven. All those times, She got better. But this time, as with the times before, something made her mad, my mom, my papa, me, or she thought about my sister or her sister or one of her sons… something, anything. And she sent my grandfather to the store for her “cigs”. “I could quit, if you all would leave me alone,” she said as she lit the first cigarette from the new pack and took a deep draw.

She was mean, extremely hardheaded, and opinionated; in many ways I’m like her. The last time I saw her: if only I knew that would have been the last time, I would not have said the things I did. When she called me a “bitch,” I would have just smiled and said, “I know Nan”, but since I didn’t know and hardheads beget hardheads who rear even more stubborn hardheads. I lashed out, and told her I hated her and that maybe life would be better if she kept her mouth shut--at least then she would have more air, and I ran out of her house, leaving only the slam of her metal front door behind.

That night, I lay in bed and I cried. I wished she would die so we wouldn’t have to put up with her. It was that next morning, my mom drove me to school and went home--Nan wasn’t feeling well, by 10:30 my dad came into my little classroom and told me to get my stuff, I needed to go home. “I don’t want to go home. Why do I have to go home? Are you mad with me?” There in front of my classmates, he told me: “Nan died, Sugar, let’s go home.” Everyone said how sorry they were, I wanted to tell them “it wasn’t your fault she smoked”. I gathered my stuff and followed dad to the truck, got in and said “I knew she was going to die, I could feel it.”

I didn’t cry. I didn’t do anything as my dad drove the 18 miles back home; there was nothing I could do.

Almost immediately people began bringing food, until there we ran out of refrigerator space and we moved stuff to the counters, and stacked food on top of food. People we knew, people she knew, they came to pay their “respects”. At her graveside, is where my habit of tapping my big toe began. I didn’t cry.

It wasn’t that I became hardhearted; I just had too much emotion. I could not let it out, so I stood there.

THE INSURMOUNTABLE

Sometimes I get the feeling

I will never write again,

as if one day my hands will fall off the ends

of my arms.

My aching fingers will cease to grip my pens.

Alas, what will I do?

When my joints are swollen shut,

and my hands cry out in pain.

When the knuckle popping doesn’t help,

and they lose the will to open.

What will I do then?

When I was young I had a bird,

a little gray lovely on

who could chirp & sing but

couldn’t fly.

Poor little one, with wings kept tidy.

Until the day the door opened wide, he

flew and flapped and gathered speed,

until he reached the air,

and up and up and up

he went, until

he remembered how.