relationships

Strewn with loss

/ Fran Haley / 33 Comments

Yesterday I wrote to the WordPress daily prompt on fate/destiny.

Today’s prompt:

What experiences in life helped you grow the most?

Loaded question.

My title today comes from a line I wrote in yesterday’s post. Will this be my pattern every day I take on the Slice of Life Story Challenge? Don’t know. We shall see.

As to this prompt about experiences…

Doesn’t most growth come from a place of pain?

*******

Dear Mom:

Someday I will do a better job of writing about this than what I am about to do now, but here goes.

I understand you have died. About a year ago.

I’ve not been able to find your obituary anywhere, nor your grave. Your plate on the headstone beside Daddy’s remains blank. My guess is that things were kept private, simple, as inexpensive as possible.

After twenty-three years without any contact, I have a few questions, but not much to say.

I have to say it, even though you’ll never know.

I got over my anger long ago. I had to, or it would have consumed me. I had young children of my own to care for; they were my priority. I now have two beautiful granddaughters. Your great-granddaughters, who will ask for the story, someday.

I got over my fear of your destructive behavior, which marked Daddy’s last years, and which shattered our family. I know it continued because, every so often in the ensuing decades, debt collectors would call my house looking for you. I would tell them the truth: I had no contact with you.

The pattern would not be broken, but people would. There could be no going back. Only forward.

I am past the point of blaming. We make our own choices. We paint our narratives in the colors of our liking, to our own purposes. To keep living with ourselves, I suppose, instead of changing. I chose the filter of Fact. Grannie once told me that she didn’t believe in divorce but she had to do it to survive your violent father. I didn’t believe in cutting ties with my own mother, either, but I had to do it, to survive. In the better part of you – for it was surely still there, somewhere – you would have understood this.

But I am not writing to justify or to judge. It’s not my place. It doesn’t matter now, anyway.

What I want to say is thank you.

Thank you for every sacrifice you made throughout my childhood. You did so much with so little.

Thank you for the sewing machine running late in the night, making our beautiful clothes.

Thank you for playing gospel records that I listened to when I was supposed to be asleep, and for the way you could paint and repair most anything.

Thank you for your humor and your unbridled cackling, contagious laughter; no one else laughed like you.

Thank you for being a safe haven for kids of troubled families in the neighborhood as well as for our neighbor who suffered a nervous breakdown. I see her frantic blue eyes, even now. Thank you for inviting the meanest bully of all to my birthday party without telling me, because you saw a child who was hurting inside, who needed to be part of something happy.

Thank you for advocating (surely, as I can’t imagine it was Daddy’s idea), to get my pet parakeet, and later for the puppies (which he forbade, to no avail; you won out).

Thank you trying to save my sick kitten, Edelweiss, which died in your hands while you tried to feed her with an eyedropper.

Thank you for your incredible creativity, the way you could whip up a costume like magic, and for coming so proudly to my school plays, your sisters in tow.

Thank you for pulling my wedding together, for mending the gown and veil from the discount racks so they’d be presentable, for weeping with sheer relief when Grandma offered to pay for the cake, and for making my all my bridesmaid dresses and my sky-blue going-away outfit. I recall you saying you were married in a blue dress; you didn’t have a wedding gown. And thank you for removing the iridescent white beads you wore to my wedding, pulling them off your neck to put around mine at the last minute, to set off that sky-blue dress as I was leaving.

I bet you thought I’d forgotten, all these long years since.

I have not. I remember it all.

As I said, one day I’ll write about it better than I can right now.

Just one more thing, as I sit by the window on this bright day, with winter fading and spring stirring in a wild dance of golden light and flickering shadows across my kitchen walls and floors: Thank you for taking me to church when I was a child. When I lost you to the darker part of yourself, I still had the church. The faith. The Lord. This has been my life. This has been the life of my family.

You might have forgotten many things. I might be one of them. I will never know.

But it’s okay. I choose to remember the good bits of you reflected in every shard I salvage from this story strewn with loss, set in motion long before I was ever in the world.

Some will say how sad, that no one ever never reached across the abyss to make amends.

I do not say this. I say it is over. The abyss is closed. Filled in. Time takes us all. The hurt is gone, although the healing will never be complete in this life.

I carry the shards.

Peace to you at long last, Mom.

P.S. I dreamed of you awhile back. Small and white-haired, but you looked well. You held your arms out to me in welcome.

“My baby has come home,” you said.

And I hugged you.

Because it was finally safe to love you again.

*******

with thanks to Two Writing Teachers for the annual March Slice of Life Story Challenge.
This is my ninth year participating alongside fellow teacher-writers,
as a means of continually honing the craft.

To those of you out there dealing with loss, death or otherwise:
Writing brings clarity.
Writing in community builds courage.

Write your story and trust.

Zen

/ Fran Haley / 11 Comments

Zen is the Japanese pronunciation of a Chinese word, ch’an, which comes from a Sanskrit root meaning “thought,” “absorption,” or “meditation.” And meditation is at the heart of Zen, along with an emphasis on self-control and insight.
—Vocabulary.com

adjective
INFORMAL
1. peaceful and calm.
—Dictionary.com

I feel so calm
in this space
the teachers say
whenever they stop by
my room
during the day

a shared space
where three of us
keep lamps burning
on our desks
in all our comings
and goings

a safe place
to rest and gather
one’s thoughts
in the cool shadows
or to decompress
from all the stress

to eat some chocolate
perhaps
or to have a voice
that’s valued
or just to know someone
is listening
without judgment

we can often answer
each other’s questions

but not always
no, not always

the important thing
is that they feel comfortable
asking

and that they feel welcome
to just be

for a while
in our circle
of lamplight

they are
the heart
of this hallowed place

—my room
during the day
whenever the teachers
stop by and say
I feel so calm
in this space.

*******

As one of three instructional coaches working from the same room, I know the needs in schools are great. If student needs are to be met, teacher needs must be met first.

Beginning with what I told a panel of professional educators in a recent interview: We need each other.

In that same vein: Today I rejoin the online community of Two Writing Teachers for the Slice of Life Story Challenge…

a safe place
to rest and gather
one’s thoughts

or to decompress
from all the stress

to have a voice
that’s valued
or just to know someone
is listening
without judgment

we can often answer
each other’s questions

but not always
no, not always

the important thing
is to feel comfortable

and welcome
just to be

for a while
in this hallowed place…

A place of peace, carved out just to be, and be here, for one another.

As teacher, writers, human beings.

I know I need it.

Darkness into light. jasleen_kaur. CC BY-SA 2.0.

Love notes

/ Fran Haley / 9 Comments

These kids.

First they wanted to know why they have to be in this reading group.

Now they want to know why they can’t come every single day for longer amounts of time.

These kids.

They are so hung up on what is “fair.”

When I ask Why? I am told: Because things are not fair at home.

I say You know I am going to be fair here.

These kids.

They notice everything. They want to talk about nails and where I get my holographic pencils.

They want to know when I will get cooler prizes in my treasure basket (a reward for working hard. I asked them what their favorite candy is. I bought it all and also put holographic pencils in the basket…the first things to go).

These kids.

They want to know if they can have two prizes (-Did you all work hard? -Yes. – Okay, You can have two…yes, all of you).

They want to know what I will do for them when we get to the end of all their reading passages.

They inform me that they want McDonald’s to celebrate. They have already composed their order…although it changes every day.

They want to know if they can eat it in my room with me.

These kids.

They all have stories. Parts I know. Parts I don’t.

I have questions about fair myself.

These kids.

They want to know who has the highest score, who’s going to be first, who’s going to update the group star chart.

That fair thing, again.

I am not going to decide for you, I say. You figure it out amongst yourselves.

And they do. Fairly.

These kids.

They don’t know how much they’re rising above, how many odds they’re beating.

But they can see their own trajectories climbing with every reading assessment.

And they linger in my space when they’re supposed to be going back to class.

When I look up after assessing the last one’s progress, I see why…

They were writing on the board.

These kids.

Love you kids.

*******

with thanks to Two Writing Teachers for the monthlong Slice of Life Story Challenge

Planets

/ Fran Haley / 2 Comments

The Boy and I
walking under
the evening sky:
he notes the bright, bright star
glittering high

—not a star, say I
that’s Jupiter

and that’s Saturn,
right over there—

I take out my phone
open an app
hold it to the sky
aim at these ‘stars’

up pop the planets
on the fly

—oh, the awe
in The Boy’s eyes—

he shows me his watch
I didn’t know
he’d set its face
to the solar system
planets positioned in orbits
line by line:

I know where they are
but I didn’t know I
could actually see them
in the sky

—what app is that??

—SkyView, say I

in an instant
The Boy has downloaded it
and is turning every which way
phone pointed
at the night sky

—Mars is right there
by the streetlight! he cries

I LOVE this,
says he,
by and by

I watch him
with a sigh
remembering how
he first fell in love
with planets
around age five

The Boy’s solar system artwork, created for me about twenty years ago.
It remains taped to the back of my bedroom door.

River dream

/ Fran Haley / 5 Comments

I cannot say, Child, what you might be experiencing within, but I can tell you I dreamed
that we were sailing along a river with green overhanging boughs
and that the waters before us were only troubled by a succession
of indentations made by tiny feet running rapidly across
—a little Jesus lizard, there in the recesses, trying to catch
or, on second thought, cavorting with, a dragonfly which shimmered and skimmered
away just as the swan drifted into view, its white feathers transforming as it neared,
changing from white to gold flushed with crimson
and then the eagle, gliding low over the glimmering water, huge, like life itself,
its curved yellow beak closed, its sharp eye affixed on us, not on the hunt,
merely acknowledging our presence
and so we drifted on and I didn’t even realize until the shore loomed
before us, rocky and steep, that we’d been riding in a little wooden boat
that navigated the river by its own power, not ours, to land us
right where we needed to be, and that we’d be able to navigate
this embankment, too, for there amid the stones and earth were steps
perfectly placed for our climb.

Cincinnati – Spring Grove Cemetery & Arboretum ‘An Unreal Moment, and a Gift.’” David Paul Ohmer CC BY 2.0.

*******
with thanks to the Two Writing Teachers community
for the place to share Slices of Life
even when they are but dreams

Filling the bucket

/ Fran Haley / Leave a comment

Bucket of Sunshine. gfpeck. CC BY-ND 2.0.

Dandelions represent the return of life, the rebirth of growth and green after a harsh winter, and a display of abundant strength and power.  – Lena Struwe, Director of the Chrysler Herbarium

At my school this year, every staff member is writing notes of encouragement and gratitude for each other. We are calling this “filling each other’s bucket” – everyone has a colorful designated bag for receiving the written messages.

I couldn’t think of better symbolism than this bucket of dandelions. Or the quote.

All too often, we never realize the collective abundant strength and power we have.

It is in the giving that we begin to experience it.

Car trouble

/ Fran Haley / 11 Comments

It is deafening, the sound.

I turn to my husband: “What’s the matter with the car?”

He’s driving. He looks perplexed. “What do you mean?”

“That droning sound. It’s so loud.”

“Oh, that. It’s just the road.”

This is a man who once worked at a major auto parts store. Granted, he took the job because he needed one if we were going to get married, long, LONG ago, when he was twenty-three and I was just turning twenty…he jokes that all he knew about cars at the time is you put gas in them.

Ahem. How much has he learned since?

“It’s NOT just the road! My car doesn’t make this noise on this road! We’re not on a steel drawbridge or anything.” (Anyone who’s ever driven across a metal draw on a bridge will know what I mean. It’s a loud, hollow, wiggly sound, directly related to the sensation in one’s stomach).

This droning sound changes with acceleration and deceleration.

“I think it’s your tires.”

Eventually he checks his tires, after I say the noise is so unnerving that I won’t ride with him anywhere else until he does. I am imagining blowouts, being stranded on the roadside, swerving in traffic when anything could happen… although I looked at the tires myself and thought they had okay-looking treads (confession: I am clearly not a car-ish kinda person, either).

He gets four nice new tires.

I happily climb into the passenger side to ride with him to… I forget, actually…when:

drrrrooooOOOOOOOONNNNnne

“IT’S STILL MAKING THAT SOUND!” I exclaim (shout? holler?).

“Well, it’s not AS loud,” he says, driving right along.

“YES IT IS! Something’s not right. This sounds like go-carts I rode as a kid. Only louder.”

He then informs me his friend tells him it may be a hole in the muffler.

He still does not seem to be concerned about driving this car.

I do not understand it.

At all.

And by the way, the tire-changing establishment told him, when they loaded him up with the four nice new tires, that he needed some brake work also.

I am getting suspicious.

He gets the brake work done and mentions to the establishment that he (and in particular, his wife) still hears the droning sound.

The establishment says: It’s probably something in your transmission. We don’t do that kind of work. You will have to take it to a full-service auto repair.

But they fix up his brakes quite nicely, graciously throwing in a couple of coupons, which is akin to throwing a cup of water on a raging bonfire… moving on, however…

Of course the droning continues. I ride with my husband to the grocery store. This is when we encounter two beautiful, fly-masked horses trotting along the backroads, completely unattended, but that is another story. I’ve begun to feel like imagery of potential harm and disaster is practically screaming at me with every turn. We manage to get home (apparently the horses did, too, as we would have heard otherwise from friends…in the countryside, news travels fast, especially if it’s bad).

I look up all the possible things that could be making the droning sound.

One of them is bad wheel bearings.

“Did the tire-brake people ever say anything about your wheel bearings?” I ask.

“Oh yeah, they checked ’em. Said they were fine.”

Something is definitely NOT fine…and it better NOT be a bearing.

Today my husband takes the car to a full-service repair, local, privately-owned, folks who’ve been in the area forever. Reputable and reliable.

A few hours later, a call: It’s a bearing….

Alrighty then.

As soon as the bearing is repaired and we are allowed to get that car, I will be riding with my husband straight to the former tire-and-brake establishment to have, shall we say, a discussion.

And I better NOT hear the tiniest hint of droning along the way…

Car Trouble. Jan Tik.CC BY 2.0

*******

with thanks to the Two Writing Teachers community for the weekly Slice of Life Story Challenge. Life is full of challenges, is it not. The writing challenge, at least, is a welcome one…