he remembers us
five months later we’re still here
just now we can speak
Calle Dieceocho
he remembers us
five months later we’re still here
just now we can speak
dreams
Cancellations
Mythili is eight. She’s named after an amazing woman who speaks three languages with the fluency of a native speaker, two of which my Mythili will never know.
I came home a bit early tonight. My oldest, Isabella, named after my sister, walked the eight blocks necessary to meet me after tutoring so we could find her some semi-leather boots that match mine. Isabella is almost ten. She can just about fit into half of my clothes and has a much keener sense of fashion than me. I don’t know how I’d shop without her.
I was home early tonight because my life revolves around cancellations. Cancel the job I’ve loved and lived for for seven years. Cancel the program for which I sacrificed everything. Cancel my private English tutoring sessions on a weekly basis, because for you it is a bonus, a brief education. For me? Just another cancellation of my semi-automatic life.
Time is money. I say this now because cancellations can be golden.
These are the words I heard tonight, as Mythili voluntarily read books to her baby sister:
“Mama, did you realize the Statue of Liberty was built in 1826?” (Isabella)
(Mythili from other room): “1886, I read 1886!”
(Me, in same moment, recalling the specific childhood memory: 1986. Age eight. Trip planned to New York City for grand celebration of one hundredth anniversary [July 4, 1986] of said statue. Mother and father holding my hands in their hands to break to me: “We’re going to have to cancel this trip. Your surgery is scheduled for that week.”)
“Isabella, it was 1886.”
Riona, the Irish queen, as diplomatic as her regal name: “Mythili, where are those boats going?”
“They’re trying to get the best view of the statue. Remember this summer, at Jimmy’s house, we were on the mainland? But then we took the boat from one island to another to get the best view? Remember, Riona? They built the statue on an island.” (She refers to our summer trip, my cousin Jimmy’s house in New Jersey, the pain of my most recent Spanish cancellation so painfully present that the Staten Island free ferry was the only possible way to see Lady Liberty).
This is why we are here. In five years, they will read about the Romans. They will say, “Remember when we went to the Roman theatre in Cartagena?”
They will study Druids. “Remember when we visited Stonehenge?”
They will chew paella. “Remember the gambas?
They will be these small children, grown so grand, their life filled with cancellations. They will remember their parents’ hands on theirs, age eight. How they loved and hated Spain. How they cried, laughed, lived.
They will remember.
The Right Place
a smooth transition
ironed beneath this long year
is all that i seek
The Reality of What It Is
Someone is cyber-stalking me.
I wish I could brag that I’ve been getting a lot of hits on my blog, but I’m not stupid. I’ve had this thing long enough to know the reality of what it is.
The reality of what it is: a release. A pounding of pen twenty-first-century style, my mighty words fighting the demons in my heart, the everyday worries that bog us all down and yet we are afraid to admit, the essence of who I am.
The reality of what it is: a few followers, five or so hits on an average day, and enough likes to perk up my early mornings and late nights, my tired eyes that never seem too tired to read or write.
So when my numbers spike for a day or five, I know something’s up. Someone is trying to find something out about me, something undefinable. I read back over the poems and I think of those moments when they were written, and the words singe with emotion, ache with the longing I felt then, anger over mistreatment, the loss, the desire… more than anything, I look back over my words and I know just exactly what, why, or who I was writing about on that day, even if the emotive distance between then and now has faded.
The words bring me back. They remind me of why I wrote them down. Why I can read over them now and feel the rainbow of emotions that courses through every human’s veins but so few are able to wholly recognize without the God-like touch of art that graces our presence on this Earth.
Someone is cyber-stalking me. Trying to discover what I was really thinking that day on Arapahoe Road. Who those shards of glass were cut for. Why they weren’t on the Brownie List. How I could see beauty in an animal jumping over a fence, a piece of chocolate, or a monosyllabic word.
But the reality of what it is: they will never know my words as intimately as I do. And isn’t that what writing, what art, is all about?
Broken Beyond Repair
how they glistened
cutting into my foot
pretty jewels as bright
as tomorrow’s sun
all the colors of the rainbow
bottles shattered in joy
their beauty too blinding
to feel the pain in my sole
stained glass of yesteryear
sunlight shining through
is lost in Iberian cathedrals
as i carry the pain in my soul
Hyperdrive
us five in a row
we have moved beyond the stars
together complete
Reins
i can write a ten-minute poem
fingertips touched
with years of hesitation
i am not accustomed
to holding these reins
lost in college years
i never took advantage of
i drive the carriage now
as we gallop across new lands
their realism lit up with logic
while at home we count coins
they know me well
how cautiously i shake these reins
like kings of the same root
our horses will fly us home
El Día de Paga
my cup is now full
once more i enjoy palm trees
their path leads to peace
Los Reyes Magos
It was a year ago, at the Día de los Reyes fiesta, that I swallowed three glasses of wine, pulled out the plastic baby Jesus from the Roscón de Reyes cake, and made my announcement to ears who would never be ready to hear such a thing.
So tumbled down the following months of my life, steps leading to a new view of the world, first from their eyes, a new set implanted in my own silly head, and now from a small apartment in Spain, where I have pulled out, year two, the King of all Kings.
He stands godlike amidst the Catholic words, his luck ready to carry my family on my back into a new year of discovery.
Yes, I said it like that. How I carry them, how you know I do, yet despise me for it in the same downtrodden tone that is washed away by the admiring and adoring words of those who know me best.
This is MY king. There is no chance, even in the small circle for which this cake is cut in this year now passed, that anyone else was meant to carry it like a charm of fruition at the bottom of purse number four. It was in my reluctant-to-indulge piece, la crema spilling out the sides and pushing his beauty into my lips, wish and resolution now granted, for another year that I know will change my life.
You couldn’t possibly understand what it’s like to stand in front of duck-pond-soaked daughter for Life Moment Number 23 in Week Two of National Lampoon’s European Vacation, cousin in tow to witness it all, and not be able to say all that you need to say to the man who means more to you than anything fathomable in this or any life.
There was no Plaza de España. There was no beauty of a park unlike any other park. No romance amongst horse-drawn carriages. No tiles that could capture the intensity of my life upside down backwards and incomplete if for one moment he is angry with me.
The reason you can’t understand it is because you don’t have it. You don’t have him day to day, the most amazing human being placed upon this Earth. You couldn’t possibly understand the weight of his anger, so uncommon that the sky could fill with dark rainclouds in the same moment that you stare at the fishermen leisurely filling their nets in the sparkling sunlit river with color-coded stone houses mocking European beauty into your blood.
It was a year ago, at the Día de los Reyes fiesta, when that Fear of Losing Him broke me down to the core for the first time in fourteen years.
He is all mine now, standing like a perfect statue on top of Spanish words. He returned, peppermint bark, Spaniards, Heidetoes, and Spain, into my arms, into the warmth that I could only receive after our heated argument in that freezing cold Sevilla apartment. He is mine, this King of all Kings, and I will carry his luck on my back as we make our way into a new year, a new life like you’ve never imagined.
Failing
Here I am again. Nit picking away. Is this a sign of the times, a symbol of my year in Spain, or just another hassle like everything else?
I still haven’t been paid of course. It’s been three months. Not to mention the six months of hell and paperwork and thousands of dollars spent prior to that.
I just need to vent tonight. Bruce and I have spent ten hours today combing through all three girls’ hair, and my own, and finding more lice and nits than you could ever imagine. Add that to the laundry that we’re barely catching up on due to winter weather conditions, no dryer, and a north facing apartment. In fact, we can’t even run our washer and another appliance at the same time without the power going out. Truth is, we cannot run ANY two appliances without the power going out. Who came up with this back-asswards system, where the electric bill costs 150€ a month yet doesn’t consistently PROVIDE ELECTRICITY? I know I’m not the only one with this problem. I’ve heard others discuss similar problems, and on our travels we also ran into electrical snafus.
Add that to the serious lack of WiFi on the Iberian Peninsula, and I’m about done. The Internet rarely works well anywhere. We pay an exorbitant amount of money for ADSL and a phone with a data plan, and it’s designed for someone who doesn’t seem to actually USE it. Bruce tried to PAY for more megabytes today, and the web site locked him out!
The schools… I’ve complained a bit, but let me add on. My middle child has a gift. Not all of us are born with it, but out of my entire household, she is the one who truly has the gift of language. She has picked up more Castellano than the rest of us combined. Yet, the day before Christmas break, she came home with a report card with a failing grade in science, the equivalent to a D in Lengua Castellano, and a D in art (have I mentioned that she’s an artist and actually plans to make a career out of this?)? Her report card came with a note stating that she was pulled out for support for science and lengua. Upon further review (her interpretation), she is pulled out of class for those subjects, then put back in the classes (that she has then missed!) to take the exams, which are of course all rote memorization of facts. Not only that, but I didn’t receive any communication from the school, prior to the report card at the end of the term, either about the support classes or her FAILING.
I could pinpoint many reasons why this country is failing. But I think I’ll stick with lack of lice checks/healthcare, high bills that cover nothing, and schools that overlook gifts for rote memorization of facts, leading to a country filled with people who cannot provide basic services such as electricity, WiFi, or a paycheck.
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