Month: December 2010

Step Write… On

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I started this blog on January 3rd, promising to write every day. Now I am entering my 363rd post, and even if I missed a few days here and there, I still managed to update the blog according to my goal. As I enter 2011, I am wondering what the future will hold. I was thinking about writing a blog called “Writing my Bike,” but there are so many other things I like to write about besides biking. My aim to stick with this for a year was partially inspired by the movie Julie and Julia. Not that I was thinking I would become a famous writer, exactly, but that I wanted to commit more of my time to writing. Sticking to one subject, as she did, just didn’t seem to work for me. Over the course of the year, the most hits I receive are for my posts about living on one salary and co-teaching. Interesting. There’s really not much more I can say about living on one salary, because most people are swimming in so much debt that they wouldn’t be able to consider it anyway. As far as co-teaching goes, my situation has improved quite a bit this school year, as I am working with different teachers, so I really don’t have anything bitchy to say, and can’t think of what I could add to the positive benefits I’ve already mentioned.

So… for 2011, perhaps I will continue to add daily posts… perhaps not. I love having a record, although at times an obscure one, of my day-to-day life, so even if few people ever read the blog, at least I will know what was happening at that point. Isn’t that really what a “web log” is supposed to be anyway? A log of one’s life?

Before I close, I would like to put down my resolutions. Just two. First, I would like to try to be more responsible with money, as we have racked up some debts in the past few months, and second, I aim to be consistent with providing the girls a weekly allowance. The only way they are ever going to learn how to manage money themselves is to start now. We’ll see how it goes.

Happy new year everyone! 2010 was an up-and-down year, so I’m hoping that 2011 will be smooth and easy.

December Daughters

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Miss Mythili

Miss Logical:
Daddy had to take a cold shower
because we took all the water
with our up-to-the-line bath.
Miss Tattle-Tale:
(whiny voice)Grandpa, Daddy has the binoculars
and he won’t let me have them!
Miss Manipulative:
I am not going to brush my teeth
or comb my hair until you give me Blankey.
Miss Dreamer:
Wait, star, I need to change my wish!
I actually don’t want to be
a monkey living in a tree.
Miss Imaginative:
(holding a broken piece of cilantro)
I just don’t understand why your
daughter would think it’s OK
to jump over the water like that.
Miss Mythili,
my ever-changing artistic child.

Riona

if i say no to your sister,
she stomps her feet
and demands justice.
if i say no to you,
you reluctantly leave the room,
rest your little legs on a chair,
and silently allow
the crocodile tears to flow down your cheeks.
how could i ever say no to the child
who can’t go an hour
without an I love you
or a kiss on the cheek
or a snuggle on the couch?

Isabella

in the course of a few months
of second grade,
you have learned the
kissing-marriage-baby-carriage song
and its R-rated 21st century version,
how to access the Internet
and what web sites have the best games,
how to apply lipstick
and pose like a model for pictures,
how to multiply and say
Newton’s laws of motion
in English and Spanish,
and how to grow up
too quickly right before my eyes.

Fifty-Seven

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it takes two sisters
four hours to make
three pies
dessert for fourteen people
when we include
two of six aunts
two of seven uncles.
three platters of lasagna
and forty-two plates later
we celebrate
year fifty-seven of
my father’s life
who with two “old” legs
just rode
twenty-four miles up a mountain
and hiked three and a half
and still carries his four grandkids
wherever the
endless numbers add up to next.

Endless Arrays

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this is what it could be like:
the drive along the curvy road,
the sleeping baby at home,
the seven of us occupying
every last seat in the van,
the mountains with their
endless array of snow,
our legs working their way
through drifts and down slopes,
the warming hut that
warms our hearts,
the children with their
endless array of happiness;
you here, the four of us together,
just as all families should be.

Dimension

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i am not here in this moment
of screaming, cussing anger.
i am magically moving my father’s car
into another dimension

here, at home, where i have a husband
who in thirteen years has barely
raised a voice, let alone allowed a cuss
in a world that is love, love, love.

you may pull forward your Sorento
and disappear into your hateful reality.
i prefer to remain in the dimension of love
that shields my heart from your evility.

you will drive home, your elderly parents
unable to determine where they went wrong.
i will drive until he takes the wheel from my
shaking hands, his hands on my hands, my heart.

Relentless Warrior

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The last three
Of twenty-one
I have to stop
Three times.
Breath a luxury
My lungs desire.
Gatorade gone
Wind relentless
And skinny bike chick
Passing me up.

How many months till May?
It’s pedaling up
Faster than i can ride down
This hill that’s kicked
My ass into the gear
Of the relentless warrior.

Underbelly

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we are here now,
sister, brother-in-law, niece,
grandparents who have filled
the underbelly of the tree
with Wal-mart’s
explosion of Chinese reality.

he and i lie in the dark
on our basement floor mattress,
the tint of the waning moon
lingering light upon his whiskered face.

Santa has already arrived,
stripped down because
the underbelly of the tree
regurgitated its recklessness.

i will never forget,
i tell him,
this time at my own
grandparents’ house,
when my mother,
her measly salary
half of my father’s pittance,
after seeing the
gifts my grandmother
inundated us with,
turned to him and said,
‘I hate being poor.‘

i try to remember this
as we rise before the sun,
set up the camera
in anticipation of their anxious faces,
and spend hours
exchanging money, goods
from the underbelly of the tree
that seems to mock,
wealth, wealth, wealth
with its shedding branches
that drop needles
like tears onto the hardwood.

Niece

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she clings to her mama’s bosom,
her face a mirror of her father,
and crawls about the room
with the intentions
of discovering every tiny item
that ever was dropped on the floor.

i try to pick her up,
but she can hear her mama’s voice,
and i remember how much i loved, hated
the need that my girls no longer have.

Christmas Come Early

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the tears disappear
as we light the fire
and with Amaretto in my belly
and Christmas music
dancing its way across the room,
they talk us into
Christmas come early.

it is only a few hours, really,
and the daylight
would steal the mood
we have set from years past.

ten minutes later,
the few gifts are opened,
and three little girls
play dress-up,
performing their
latest dance songs
for the video camera.

this is as small and simple
as i would ever like it to be:
the Scotch pine,
the warm fire,
the relishing of items
shared by all,
the love of what is here
and what is not here
all in the same moment.

Light

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she shines a light
that she’ll only sometimes
allow us to see.

for the most part,
she’s masked in mystery
that neither of us understands.

so when i see a ray
shine through, please do not
block its passage into the night.

i have coaxed her for years,
just as i have coaxed you. yet,
light eludes me, darkness ensues.