Moving Blues

march 12 2010

I’ve had quite a morning already. The movers came to take my (Erin’s) piano to her new house at 7:25; I told Erin to make sure they knew to call first, since our doorbell is OOO. Instead they were banging!!! And my neighbor’s dog starts barking, and the lower level neighbor is at the door like ‘what the hell?’  I tell him, "It's OK, they're here for my piano." I ask the guys, "Didn't you get the message to call, that the doorbell is out of order?" One says, "We got a message to knock loudly." Alright then, right this way, here's the piano. And then 4 of these guys get the piano stuck in the stairway and I had already woken up with a horrid headache. So, I cry a little on the way to work….
 


march 14 2010

I wake up to my room rearranged by my sweet realtor and his partner and I know I am about to change buses, catch a train or walk out into a new part of my life, living somewhere else. It’s complicated. Yesterday Megan and I went though more stuff in storage, bits of pieces of poems I wrote, that I don’t want to throw away. Stacks of postcards that the girls’ dad lovingly wrote and sent them from all over the world.

Megan laughs, "Look" she says. Here's a postcard Steve sent to her when she was just a baby, getting teeth. I read, 'Dear Meggie, When I get home I am going to make you a big steak, now that you have teeth. Love, Daddy.'

As I make my coffee, Laura Nyro is singing, “I can’t see God smiling...I am the blues.” This song makes my heart soar, for as she is the blues, her voice captures the magnificence that makes the blues bearable. I think about Steve, and how I’ve never really stopped loving him. How I couldn’t live with him, but I can have a life large enough with love for him in it. I respect him, and I want this for his girls too, to love and respect their dad, not to ignore the hurts, not to not stand up for themselves, but I guess it is compassion, and more than compassion, maybe I will call it big love. Love that protects and there is still some left. Wide love.

For a long time, I too, have been the blues and I’m ready to walk away from that gig. I don’t know where we I am going to. Somewhere new.

march 17 2010

St. Patrick’s Day

This morning when I wake up I can remember all the St. Patrick’s day mornings, when I was a child. My mom made breakfast for my dad (half Irish) every morning. Seriously, every morning. He would come down the big wooden staircase, I’d hear his steps, he’d stop in the kitchen for his cup of coffee and then sit in the big breakfast room; a room as big as the dining room-but not as formal, and sit at the table and wait for my mom to serve him breakfast. Just sit there, smelling good, freshly shaved cheeks and clean ironed shirt. On St. Patrick’s day he’d have on a St. Paddy’s day tie and I’d know it was a special day. Sometimes, he’d have a furry shamrock for me to pin to my school uniform to wear to school that day. It was St. Paddy’s day and I was 1/4 Irish.


Almost there

You don’t hear much about the almost there

About the pause between not making it and making it

The chasm that seems to lie between oatmeal and oatmeal cookie

The story about how I was so excited to be working with my literary hero as my literary coach on my memoir, when all my time slipped away and then I finished my master’s degree and I was undecided still, as to which career path to follow, and then damn, my daughter’s health started taking a nosedive and soon it had been months, yes months since I’d worked on my memoir

And now I have this degree but it’s not about writing and I haven’t even read Nabokov, and I’m not sure how hip writers will think I am, if I ever get to hang out with them in real life

How do I get back into the slipstream of on my way to making it and not feeling like the tide has turned, the toast has burned and I will die unknown, a wanna be

Gotta stayed tuned to the almost there station, gotta remember what Downtown Browne says, “patience and persistance” when all I can say is, “Aren’t we there yet?” as I listen to the sound of time passing