PAIN POEM
Pain carves my face like a pumpkin, a toothless rictus to frighten children.
Pain corrodes my day, drills deep into my psyche, shattering emotions
Bone scrapes on bone
Nerves scoured raw misfire
Muscles clench and spasm
My body is a prison
Pain trumps all else
Every night pain claims me for its bedfellow, a sadist making himself at home.
Wrapping arms of barbed wire around my torso, pain drags me down
Breathing fire on my neck
Splintering vain resistance
Shredding my sleep
No respite anywhere
Pain trumps all else
On the other hand I witness Sister Meg, silent tears streaming down her face,
Transfigured, offering her suffering as a joyful sacrifice.
Glorified, accepting pain
Clutching her rosary beads
Seeking only God’s will
No energy wasted
For Sister Meg pain does not trump God.
As for me pain remains a bully, a tyrant, a thief stealing my patience
A ravenous beast, pain devours my will and flays my soul
I bitch, moan, whine, and complain.
I resist. I fight. I medicate.
My agnostic self suffers
But not in vain
My poem trumps pain
Tuesday, June 28, 2011
Sunday, June 19, 2011
FATHERLESS DAYS
“Don’t you miss not having a father?” The question came at me from time to time as I was growing up – mostly from my schoolmates.
“How can you miss someone you never knew?” I’d reply, shrugging off any deeper implications of the question. Not aware there were any deeper implications.
So, I grew up in a one-parent family and that one parent was often missing in one way or another much of the time. I heard references to my father from my mother from time to time. Mostly about him being an alcoholic and an unsuccessful door-to-door salesman. Explaining somewhat why she left him when I was five years old, and again more permanently when I was six.
By the time I was a teenager I was aware that he lived in Seattle where I had been born. We lived in Santa Fe, New Mexico in a kind of religious cult community. The cult was benign as cults go. No sensational drama, just lots of prayer meetings, and constant entreaties for “love gifts.” My poor mother never failed to have a dollar or two, which we could ill afford, to “gift” to the wealthy leader.
When I was fourteen I lobbied hard to come to the Northwest and repeat seventh grade with my younger cousin Janyce in Marysville. Successful in my scheming, I had my first airplane ride to Seattle in 1949. My father picked me up at the airport. I had no memories of him, just my mother’s comments. The plan was for me to stay with him for a few days before my aunt and uncle from Marysville could drive down to pick me up.
He lived in a tiny one-bedroom apartment in Tacoma where I slept on the couch. He commuted by bus to Seattle where he worked at Rhodes Department Store on Second Avenue in the appliance section. He ate all his meals out. So, for those few days we’d catch the bus after breakfast for the hour-long ride to Seattle. I went to work with him each day and just hung around the store in the mornings. After a quick lunch my father would give me a few dollars and point me in the direction of one of the downtown movie theaters where I would spend the afternoon.
I’d meet him back at the store by closing time and the two of us would walk down First Avenue to one of the card-room/taverns for dinner before catching the bus back to his room in Tacoma. My father was a taciturn bookish man in contrast to my loquacious mother, but he told me some things about himself those few evenings we were together.
His philosophy of salesmanship: “I give them information and let them make up their own minds.” No wonder he was unsuccessful. He talked a little about growing up an only child in Clarkston, Washington with a mother who did not like children. When he asked his father why he stayed with her, his father said, “Mabel sets a good table.” We talked of books, of philosophy, of metaphysics. He smoked a pipe.
Having so often heard my mother mention his alcoholism I was surprised I didn’t see him drinking since I thought I smelled alcohol on his breath every day. But he did not seem to be impaired in any way. Years later I realized what I’d smelled was bay rum aftershave lotion. And I found out that he was a periodic alcoholic; every six months or so he would go on a bender and on occasion have to be hospitalized.
He came to Marysville to visit several times during the school year I was there, and seemed to be painfully shy and awkward around people. No wonder my mother, out of patience with me, would complain how much like my father I was. Taciturn. Bookish. Awkward around people. The legacy of my absent father.
In early summer I spent several more days with him before flying back to Santa Fe. One Saturday he took me to the Woodland Park Zoo where he took some pictures of me. Photography was one of his hobbies. We also visited The Smith Tower building.
Ten years later I returned to the Seattle area with my husband and children and would invite him over for Thanksgiving and Christmas dinner. When his mother died he moved back to Clarkston and eventually started keeping company with a next-door neighbor somewhat older than he was. Miss Lou invited the children and me to visit him east of the mountains and we usually did a couple of times a year. He was happy.
Eventually he got sick with cancer of the esophagus, and was hospitalized in Spokane. I drove over, stayed in a cheap motel, and visited him every day. One day when I arrived I was told that he had almost died during the night and had had to be resuscitated. When I went in to see him he looked panicky. The cancer made it difficult for him to speak, but he clutched at me and I leaned closer to hear him. “They are trying to kill me,” he whispered. And I realized that he had misinterpreted the violent efforts to revive him.
He died shortly thereafter. He was 69. After the funeral my brother and I helped sort out his parent’s house where he had lived. I got some furniture and books and papers that I loaded into my station wagon to take back to Seattle.
By that time I’d become aware that having been raised without a father had set me on a path of searching for a father in every man I met. Part of what I’d been telling myself for years was that I had no memory of being loved. Not by my mother. Not by my seldom-seen father. Explaining in part my unhappy life.
During the next year as I sorted through his papers I found lots of photographs. One that had been taken at the zoo when I visited him. Another, more important one, taken by someone else shows him squatting down on one knee in front of a fir tree. He’s clutching a five-year-old me on the other knee. We both are grinning like idiots.
I could no longer believe that I had never been loved.
“Don’t you miss not having a father?” The question came at me from time to time as I was growing up – mostly from my schoolmates.
“How can you miss someone you never knew?” I’d reply, shrugging off any deeper implications of the question. Not aware there were any deeper implications.
So, I grew up in a one-parent family and that one parent was often missing in one way or another much of the time. I heard references to my father from my mother from time to time. Mostly about him being an alcoholic and an unsuccessful door-to-door salesman. Explaining somewhat why she left him when I was five years old, and again more permanently when I was six.
By the time I was a teenager I was aware that he lived in Seattle where I had been born. We lived in Santa Fe, New Mexico in a kind of religious cult community. The cult was benign as cults go. No sensational drama, just lots of prayer meetings, and constant entreaties for “love gifts.” My poor mother never failed to have a dollar or two, which we could ill afford, to “gift” to the wealthy leader.
When I was fourteen I lobbied hard to come to the Northwest and repeat seventh grade with my younger cousin Janyce in Marysville. Successful in my scheming, I had my first airplane ride to Seattle in 1949. My father picked me up at the airport. I had no memories of him, just my mother’s comments. The plan was for me to stay with him for a few days before my aunt and uncle from Marysville could drive down to pick me up.
He lived in a tiny one-bedroom apartment in Tacoma where I slept on the couch. He commuted by bus to Seattle where he worked at Rhodes Department Store on Second Avenue in the appliance section. He ate all his meals out. So, for those few days we’d catch the bus after breakfast for the hour-long ride to Seattle. I went to work with him each day and just hung around the store in the mornings. After a quick lunch my father would give me a few dollars and point me in the direction of one of the downtown movie theaters where I would spend the afternoon.
I’d meet him back at the store by closing time and the two of us would walk down First Avenue to one of the card-room/taverns for dinner before catching the bus back to his room in Tacoma. My father was a taciturn bookish man in contrast to my loquacious mother, but he told me some things about himself those few evenings we were together.
His philosophy of salesmanship: “I give them information and let them make up their own minds.” No wonder he was unsuccessful. He talked a little about growing up an only child in Clarkston, Washington with a mother who did not like children. When he asked his father why he stayed with her, his father said, “Mabel sets a good table.” We talked of books, of philosophy, of metaphysics. He smoked a pipe.
Having so often heard my mother mention his alcoholism I was surprised I didn’t see him drinking since I thought I smelled alcohol on his breath every day. But he did not seem to be impaired in any way. Years later I realized what I’d smelled was bay rum aftershave lotion. And I found out that he was a periodic alcoholic; every six months or so he would go on a bender and on occasion have to be hospitalized.
He came to Marysville to visit several times during the school year I was there, and seemed to be painfully shy and awkward around people. No wonder my mother, out of patience with me, would complain how much like my father I was. Taciturn. Bookish. Awkward around people. The legacy of my absent father.
In early summer I spent several more days with him before flying back to Santa Fe. One Saturday he took me to the Woodland Park Zoo where he took some pictures of me. Photography was one of his hobbies. We also visited The Smith Tower building.
Ten years later I returned to the Seattle area with my husband and children and would invite him over for Thanksgiving and Christmas dinner. When his mother died he moved back to Clarkston and eventually started keeping company with a next-door neighbor somewhat older than he was. Miss Lou invited the children and me to visit him east of the mountains and we usually did a couple of times a year. He was happy.
Eventually he got sick with cancer of the esophagus, and was hospitalized in Spokane. I drove over, stayed in a cheap motel, and visited him every day. One day when I arrived I was told that he had almost died during the night and had had to be resuscitated. When I went in to see him he looked panicky. The cancer made it difficult for him to speak, but he clutched at me and I leaned closer to hear him. “They are trying to kill me,” he whispered. And I realized that he had misinterpreted the violent efforts to revive him.
He died shortly thereafter. He was 69. After the funeral my brother and I helped sort out his parent’s house where he had lived. I got some furniture and books and papers that I loaded into my station wagon to take back to Seattle.
By that time I’d become aware that having been raised without a father had set me on a path of searching for a father in every man I met. Part of what I’d been telling myself for years was that I had no memory of being loved. Not by my mother. Not by my seldom-seen father. Explaining in part my unhappy life.
During the next year as I sorted through his papers I found lots of photographs. One that had been taken at the zoo when I visited him. Another, more important one, taken by someone else shows him squatting down on one knee in front of a fir tree. He’s clutching a five-year-old me on the other knee. We both are grinning like idiots.
I could no longer believe that I had never been loved.
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