sweetheart sides

I sit heavy, next to her mechanical bed 

noticing its angle.

Her hospice tongue lulls in her mouth.

Ice will only satiate the need.

I wonder at the tired eyes of my mother,

watching her mother.

His distracted foot twitches as he prepares

to somehow be without.

How will he have tea alone,

without her to share the tea bag?

"Nan and I" starts every story

--A life side by side.

So young for her to marry.

All thought her knocked up.

But no.  Just in a hurry

with the war nipping their heels.

Poor and sick most her life, but with her Bud.

How do sweethearts live alone?

How do they be without?

Shrove Tuesday

Shrove Tuesday (or Pancake Tuesday) is a day of confession.

I must confess that I have been away from writing.  It was nice to rest in the needed hiatus following my dissertation, but I have decided that it's time.  Time to write again.  This year for my lenten devotion I have decided that I am going to write every day.  Something.  Every. Day.  While a large majority of this stuff will be crap (that is for certain), just the idea of writing every day means that perhaps something will come out in the writing.  After all, I like to tell my students that an important tool in writing is their butts.  A butt in a writing chair got a lot more writing done than most other tools.

So each day I will write.  Starting tomorrow.  I am not going to narrowly define my topics or wrangle myself into writing things that I hate.  Instead, I am going to simply follow the intent of this blog in the first place--to focus on how today is a REAL day--a day to live life to the fullest.  Within this lenten season will come the birth of our first child and the time that comes following that.  I see it as a good time to document.

I have debated about giving up FaceBook for lent.  I toss and turn the idea.  Just this morning I learned of a friend leaving youth ministry.  I wouldn't have without the good 'ole FB; however, I have come to see that each morning as I lazily scroll through posts--most of which are simply a waste of time--that I am missing the magic hour at the start of the day.  I am missing it.

Perhaps that is my Lenten devotion this year more simply--to stop missing it.

3 Preggo Poems

Body

You've always done things I don't understand.

as a scab fades to nothing

a banana turns to energy

and a 13-year-old skinny blonde stands two inches taller

Imperceptible change only measured in hindsight.

That doesn't bowl me over like it should.

Or force me to ask how . . . or why?

Instead I walk by you like wallpaper that's the ugliest

red

floral

catastrophe,

but I don't notice, after all

it's always been that way.  Hasn't it?

My hand fingered the mattress

Wrinkled the over-washed white sheet

Just like I told it to.

As I sat with Grandma--

Hospital sea-green sterile, enveloping chords and paper skin--

Trying to look at anything else but how she feels,

To soften fuzzy edges.

But you feinted . . .

. . . after I specifically told you not to.

But as I continue to round out with a new body inside

perpetually in the future

with the present invisible

except for this huge pairs of knockers

that don't seem to fit on this B-Cup diva

I wonder what you're up to.

And I've never understood less.

I never thought you were all that

shifty

shady

dark-alley walkin'

You've been a good employee

On time and pretty reasonable

Listening to me, your boss,

Index finger taps the letter "j" on keyboard

almost

before I can think it.

You're good.

You're quick.

Dependable you.

Turkey Bacon

I like to think about you.

As I turn over and run my right toe across the quilt edge.

Hair tither wiped away

As I squint out the window at bare branches

Hoping for Spring

And you-you and me-different.

Lucie wags her tail and shakes her collar

so loud

saying "get up or I'll piss all over"

I call her bluff.

Linger and scroll my finger across my phone

delaying vertical.

She puts a paw by my one open eye and

harumphs

as her head flops down curling over you

and over the thin line of me that separates

As I open the other eye

Half the world is dark and the other light.

I don't think she knows, but it's fun to wonder wish

that she's somehow sensing the magic

of new life waiting inside.

The doctors say you know our voices.

I don't even recognize mine on a recording, but you--

you know it.

I like to point out to the daddy voice that you're going to be both me and him

Somehow 50/50.

He just smiles and says the part like him

is Filet Mignon

and the part like me. . .  

. . . is Turkey Bacon.

And he laughs.

I hope you laugh like him.

And someone hears it the way I hear his.

I hope you're just okay with you . . . whatever that might be.

You'll just have to explain to your dad.

If you end up liking Turkey Bacon.

Motherhood

The sign by the highway reads

Windmill Farm

in faded black

paint on white

The "m" is hard to read, and no windmills turn for miles.

            But they did.

The parents sit wraggled

eyes tight after errands

the giving--oh the giving

that they could never prepare for

The sexy in them wrung out, and she doesn't drop F bombs anymore

            But she did.

Teenage heart throbbing

She escapes parents

blunders through identities

making new ones

and wears faces

She's independent now, and she knows she doesn't need them after all

            But she did.

Old mother

reminisces on poems

she wrote before wrinkles

wrote her.

Her first pregnancy totters on rusty memory, a vapor

The writer seems a stranger, and she knows it would have all been different if she didn't.

            But she did.

not mine

my decision

made

a person

and yet

not me wholly

but in part

I see a little man

two and a half

a middle name we planned

realize he wouldn't have been

necessarily

if I moved somehow different. . .

shaking hands

would not have been

if I moved somehow. . .

lost job

would not have been

if I moved. . .

lukemia

would not have been

if I. .

or rather, if I didn't

what if

all were mine?

my son, my patient

my lost job

my loneliness

my prayers

way leads on to way

so

how do I pray?

he's his

a person, on accident?

not quite, I know

but wonder

my decision made

a person

and he's sick today

so I forget how sick this makes me

and pray

for what's not mine

on marriage

One of my favorite parts about my husband are the myriad of e-mails that I receive in the course of a given day. Here is today's first message:

I now have a new plan for my facial hair as well. I am going to grow it until Brent's wedding and then have some ridiculous shave job for the rehearsal dinner before shaving the morning of the wedding. I am so excited for this grand plan.

Marriage

When you "sign up" for this marriage stuff, all glittering in a white dress, I don't know if you can ever totally understand what you're entering into.  Don't get me wrong, I highly recommend marriage. . . but at times as a couple you find yourselves helpless.  Like yesterday evening. . .

The day started for me with sterling intentions.  I tried to save some parking moolah by bumming rides to UNL campus, but when I was dropped off last night, keyless--locked out of my own home in the cold, I knew I had to call Ralph.  He was 20 minutes away, warming up for his basketball game, and I had volleyball pretty soon. . . as we sat on the phone in silence, both knowing the only answer, I wished I could undo it somehow.  As his new tires screeched into our driveway, I could tell he was annoyed. . . actually that's putting it lightly.

After getting my volleyball gear, and both of us going to our respective sports games, I was preparing myself for a second round of wrath, but instead he came home smiling--like he does--excited for me to see part of my Valentine's present early.  I've always wanted my 8-bit Nintendo back (he hates it when I call it 8-bit), but I never realized he was listening and seeing me so clearly.

Marriage isn't what I expected, but I love it more all the time.