Mother’s Day is a toughie.

 

Mom has been gone for twenty years and I still feel her absence so deeply, still think of her almost every day, trying to remember her voice, seeing her in my reflection in the mirror more and more, the lines parenthesizing my lips and my turkey wattle neck, the need to stuff my cankles into ankle socks with sneakers and confide in grocery store clerks.

It’s complicated though because she wasn’t very kind to me for the first quarter century of my life. She was a fundamentalist pastor’s wife and godliness and obedience were of utmost importance in our household. Her hand and her touch brought pain much more often than tenderness. Then a fluke brain aneurysm wiped away her meanness and cleared her memory banks. We were gifted a little over a decade with a mother whose emotions ran close to the surface, who cried easily and laughed and smiled a lot and forgot she’d ever been cruel.

I wish sometimes we’d had more time with the good Mom, had longer to laugh and cry together and settle into a relationship that felt easier and more normal.

But we didn’t.

Life is cruel too, and I laugh and cry now with my sisters, or sometimes just alone.

sunflowers

sonnenblumen

I’m a sucker for sunflowers. My extended family originates in Kansas, aka the Sunflower State. One of my favorite published stories, included in Main Street Rag’s 2010 anthology, is named “The Sunflower State.” For years, we’ve taken sunflowers to a loved ones’ grave and I’ve got two important names tattooed on me along with a vibrant sunflower.

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So, seeing these abloom just blocks from my home made me feel welcomed, and loved.

Memoir seeking agent update 5

Yesterday was a double-rejection day: one from an agent, one from a journal.
I've taken some time to re-work my pitch, synopsis and overview. Also pulled another selection from the memoir to potentially publish as a standalone (there are 2 published excerpts so far).

So far:

• 8 submissions
• 5 rejected
• 3 no response yet

I'm taking an actual vacation this week so will hit it hard today and then when I get back.
Do I need a more surgical edit? Possibly? I'm hoping not but I'll do what the piece requires.
Sometimes I'm just too close to see it.

tedious tedious tedious

Geez I hate being left on read.

Hate it!

Hate the 2 or 3 day turnaround on texts.

One acquaintance waited a month to reply, then started with Hiiii and wrote as though no time had passed.

More than one will respond to a straightforward invitation with a sidestep, an emoji, or nothing.

It makes me feel put-in-my-place.

Sidelined.

Unimportant.

In Seattle I blame it on the Freeze. Other places, I don’t know what to call it.

Maybe it’s my Gen X-ness, my impatience, my everlasting FOMO, eager to plan, see art, hear bands, enjoy life.

But fuck how I hate it.

If you want to say no, say no.

If you’re not sure, say you’re not sure.

If you need to last minute cancel, do that. No more excuses! No headache, no work commitment. No. NO.

In some ways covid-times were easier. It was all No.

how often do you feel joy?

I'm continuing to read memoirs that stun and dazzle.

Charles M. Blow's Fire Shut Up in my Bones, about growing up Black and bisexual in the American South. He writes directly and powerfully about being abused by a family member, not minimizing the horror, finding the grace and truth within himself. His realization of his skills as a writer is also beautifully and humbly written. 

"These were things that I had to learn to fold tight so that no one could read them. Even now it seemed to me that the world was full of boys like Chester and men like Paul--the ones who looked at me and saw a chance, not a child."

"I had to resort to the most useful and dangerous lesson a damaged child ever learns--how to lie to himself."

"There is nowhere to hide in a small house. I had to make a room within rooms, a safe place midway in the mind, behind seeing and before knowing. There I could resurrect memories and bury secrets."

I'm also about finished with Erika Krouse's Tell Me Everything, which combines true crime, an amateur p.i, a dirty football program and a complicated mom-daughter-abuser triangle. This one hits so close to home that I can only read a chapter at a time. Krouse references psychiatrist Daniel Siegel who writes about making sense of one's past, and people who tell the same trauma story over and over. I'm going to read Siegel and see if it can bring some thoughtfulness to one of my support groups. 

Anyway, to the question: how often do you feel joy? For me, infrequently. But I'm hoping a weekend of music and friends and nature might bring me some.

work werq is

via GIPHY