Five Feet Away

How old is too old for a son to sleep in the same bed as his mother?
My good friend Simone has a nine-year-old son. She is a single mother, never been able to afford an apartment large enough for an extra bedroom. even though her son's bed is a mere five feet away from hers, her son demands to crawl into bed with her every night. If she fights this, or tries to bribe him, or uses savvy, crafty language to encourage his needed Independence, he cries.
And not just whimpering. Loud, hysterical sobbing. As if a bomb has exploded in the backyard and the only thought of safety or comfort is his heels crooked into the back curving of mommy's knees. If he wakes in the night and Simone is breathing heavy and steady a foot from his face, all is good in the world. If he wakes in his own bed, even with the radio simmering and a small lamp glowing above his head, bad, bad things may happen.
The ghosts will float out, the monsters will inch their ugliness from under the bed, the wind against the blinds is really a bad man trying to break in, steal him away, hurt his mother. She is all he has. He needs to keep her safe as much as she must protect him from fears even he can't explain or understand.
Simone struggles with this, she told me. She realizes it is best for him, a priority at this age for her son to sleep in his own bed, to face these fears with sword and shield. But even she enjoys the comfort of another body in her bed. She can turn her head slightly and see the rising of his chest, the mouth open wide, the arms wrapped loosely around a spare pillow at his waist. She knows he is at peace, he is safe, he has loosened his fears from their grip just for the night at least.
Yet she feels like a failure. She is not tough enough or strong enough. She knows too little of discipline, having been coddled herself as a child, the baby in the family, the mother who was utterly selfless. Simone knows what she needs to do, for herself, for her son. He has even admitted he is ashamed that he still sleeps with her. If his friends found out, he would be mortified. He feels like a failure himself and either sobs or crawls into his quiet little boy cave, hiding like a cub from emotion he is not ready to feel.
I don't know what to tell Simone. Keep trying, is all I can say. Eventually he'll be ready on his own. He'll know when the right time is. Yet I don't know if even I believe this. What if she starts a relationship and that man wants to sleep in her bed? How will her son react? Will he feel abandoned, jealous, over-protective? Some kind of strange, yet innocent Oedipal complex?
I can only hug her and listen to her and offer thoughts I'm not sure of myself.
Motherhood is more complex than the makings of the perfect mashed potatoes. They may look good, be the right texture, creaminess, the right amount of salt. But if anyone ever knew the effort and compulsive attention it takes to make those white perfect peaks on your plate, they would faint at the thought of it. They wouldn't even want to know the secret. The fantastic, terrifying secret ingredient. They wouldn't want to know that sometimes you don't even know. You close your eyes, bite your lip, grab something from the shelf, and toss in the pot without looking. It's all just luck really.

Blog Appropriate

What is appropriate for a blog? For all the world to see if they so choose? Am I hurting my son by writing personal information about him, details into his childhood that he could accidentally read and feel embarrassed or ashamed by? Am I hurting my relationship by re-configuring our relationship and its ups and downs into fiction and poetry? I'm honestly not sure. Do I want to hurt anyone by my writing? Of course not. But I do not want to censor myself, or worry incessantly while I'm actually getting writing accomplished about who and how I will be disrespecting a person or situation. Does this make me selfish or cold or insensitive? I don't know. I do not write just to write. I write when I have something to say, something to feel, some wrangling of my mind to find answers to. As one should think before they speak, should one think before they write? I need to think of this for a while. Turn it around in my brain like a dryer on high for a while. And of course, while I mull, and think, and feel, I will write. Hopefully, I hurt no one's feelings in this process. Hopefully, I do not divulge too much. This sounds sarcastic, but it's not. More later on this subject. Bya.

The Body

It's just a body, isn't it? Skin, moles, freckles. Tendons, veins, soft purring of fine hair. It is flawed and it is beautiful. It can be used and it can be adored. It can be victimized and it can be lavished upon.

But it is only a body, an external version of self.

When does it become more than that? When does it become muscle and blood and organs and soul?

When you are loved, is it more? Does that love and respect and trust transcend the appearance of body and expand like blown glass into what is beneath the surface, beneath the desire, beneath the need to be wanted, accepted, the need to be more than just hollow air.

Can the love of self do this? Can the love of your child do this? Can the love of a good man do this? Yes!

I will be more than flesh, fine hair, and rushing blood. I will be the blower of that glass, the breath that gives the body life, the expansion of air turned to soul, turned to ME.

Swallow

Swallow

Snow falls like pillows
And God seems more far away
Than ever on this winter dawn,
Orange fastened to the sky like velcro
And I can’t rip it off, tear back
The color and make it dull again.
My son sleeps, crooked
As a curved spine in my bed,
Not his. My bed all night long.
He is afraid of his mind, of monsters
He cannot see or feel or play
Chess with at his little desk.
I smoke on the concrete of my stoop
And wonder if a man will ever love me,
Take me in like an orphan
And swallow up my fears
Like baby sparrows swallow worms.
The taste is good to some
If you trust what you’re given.
I wake my son; it is time for school.
Another day of learning and forgetting
All that was said. Another day of open
Mouths that do not speak, of hearts
That shatter like ceramic plates.
Of God who never comes to warm the air.

1/12/07

My dead mother talking to me

My Dead Mother Talking To Me

How can I make you stop from where I am?
I am only three feet above the floor.
My heels could rest on your ribcage and you’d never know,
Never feel the indentation, the hot pressing like an iron.
You ask to see me all the time but I can not give you that.
I can give you music, manipulate the sound waves
Into playing our song, our Irish sinking ship song,
Scrape the wall with just a feeling, and make
My photograph fall to the floor and startle you.
I can do many things you are not aware I can.
I whisper in your ear but you think it is yourself.
I wrap my arms around your chest but you think
The pressure is your panic and you swallow sedatives
Like you would a box of chocolate truffles.


(unfinished) 2/3/07

Submission

I'm not sure what to write today, but it has been almost a week, so I felt I was overdue.

Thanks to my dear friend Alana (Renegade writer) I submitted two poems to an open contest. Even paid a whopping eight dollars for the submission. I don't expect to win, but I need to experience this if I am to continue writing, writing about anything substantial. Be it beauty, bitterness, or downright monstrosity-ness. I just plain need to write, send them out into the world and see what happens. Maybe the gutter will seem closer to my face than I want, or maybe, a dragonfly will land on my hand and sit there for a moment, its quick wings slowing to feel the fine hairs on my knuckles.

Maybe someone will say my writing means something to them, anything.