"Trees are poems that the earth writes upon the sky" a line from Khalil Gibran. I wonder if I can teach this to you someday.
It's Sunday morning.
I woke up at 8, you were already up. Getting paper for drawing.
You turned the Xmas tree on and I plugged in the string of Santa head lights,
You pointed at their reflection in the glass and said how cool it was that the heads looked like they were floating in space.
We found a bag of balled up wrapping paper and taped some on a paper and added stickers. Yours looks professional and abstract, your father thought it was a new piece of wrapping paper. But it's his Xmas card.
Then your dad and his girlfriend woke up and made breakfast. BACON. Like they do every weekend. In fact, the apartment is usually suffused with the smell of bacon on many mornings, I have lost track.
You have discovered the word "humping" and "connection", which we think you think is the word "copulation". the conversation turned "awkward!!", like you like to say. (Rising intonation, singing it, to prolong the awkwardness of any moment). But I was grateful to turn the conversation away from gun control and how we are so lucky for every day that you are not in the same room as someone who might pull out a semiautomatic. Like in Newtown, CT.
You then played a Disney videogame about an alligator who wants nothing more than to take a bath. You take your finger (or mine sometimes) and draw a path for the water to find its way to the right pipe. Sometimes there are bonus duckies. We are trying to get you to slow down and READ some of the words, which, by nature you are fighting. Your father is good at coaching you to break down the words into sounds (something called "chunking").
Your dad stopped you after too long, and told you that it was time to read. You countered that all your books were boring. I suggested you write a book of your own. Something good. You had a minor misunderstanding with your father about whether this was a justifiable replacement. You got a little whiny and your father got into his grownup voice and I escaped to my room while you guys hashed it out.
You wrote a great story about Rob the goldfish turning into a Rudolph figure and saving Christmas.
I wrote a story about a tree knocking on our door and you turning it into our Christmas tree.
When your cousins from Vermont arrived, you asked me to make an announcement so everyone could be quiet and you could read your story out loud. You did and it went over quite well. Even your dad was pleased. (I think it made you happy too!)
Just a note about myself. This is the only place where my stories will go. I've been very depressed lately. (No work, no money, few friends, our neighbor who is depressed and not available to be the friend I need-someone to cheer me up). Thank goodness I can write! Your mother was astonished everytime I told her about any of my art projects, "At least you can do that!" The Mousetraps, the ink doodles, the watercolors, everything. She didn't have any of that. No outlet.
While you were doing the video game, I read a story in the section of the NYTimes, about a sister who gave up trying to deal with the Mental Health system and has learned to just exist with her mentally ill brother.
http://www.nytimes.com/2012/12/16/fashion/modern-love-providing-comfort-when-a-cure-is-out-of-reach.html
It hit me close to "home", I would love to just exist with your mother and with Superman down the hallway. But the BiPolar Dragon rears its ugly head. She will never forgive me for forcing her to get help during her whirlwind. And Superman doesn't like to talk to people. At least not me. Even though he has written HUNDREDS if not thousands of emails to me. I expect him to write to me today, "a note just to say hi". Sometimes, it is hard for him "to even communicate in such a light form as writing".
I take him at his word, but it is lonely & painful for me.
And so your family came and went, crazy with children and your father trying to relate to his brother whom he rarely sees. This was me meeting them for the first time, or at least the first time to have a conversation. I tried to feel out the situation; your father hadn't invited me to brunch. And the conversation turned into itself like a Bey Blade battle, words sparking off each other. But I was as useless as a Lego character, off to the side. I went into my room, but kept the door open, just in case.
(If this was your mother, she would have made sure to invite me. To have me meet everyone. To bring me along. She did when her sister & family came by this summer, a week before her Whirlwind. We all sat together around the big table at 181, by the window. I crawled under it to sit next to you in the windowseat, remember how funny? Even your father was there, and we were all nice to each other. Genuinely nice. The last time.)
Cody kept coming in to my room when everyone was running around. Keeping me company. Rubbing me with his nose, looking pleadingly into my eyes. Knowing that we would be the ones left home alone.
I know now, how my grandmother must've felt. Ignored for not speaking English. An old woman. People see me, but I don't get a seat at the table. I used to tell this to your father, and he mentioned how I reminded him of your mother. Of her own loneliness. Her living across the street from her previous life. So I don't fight for attention anymore. I only talk to my computer.
I'm useful in helping you turn your reluctance of reading into something you can be proud of. My quiet little pieces of art, that even your aunt seemed amazed by. But here I sit, with tears in my eyes. Lonely and useless and wondering where my place in this world is. Still trying to figure it out.
It's Sunday morning.
I woke up at 8, you were already up. Getting paper for drawing.
You turned the Xmas tree on and I plugged in the string of Santa head lights,
You pointed at their reflection in the glass and said how cool it was that the heads looked like they were floating in space.
We found a bag of balled up wrapping paper and taped some on a paper and added stickers. Yours looks professional and abstract, your father thought it was a new piece of wrapping paper. But it's his Xmas card.
Then your dad and his girlfriend woke up and made breakfast. BACON. Like they do every weekend. In fact, the apartment is usually suffused with the smell of bacon on many mornings, I have lost track.
You have discovered the word "humping" and "connection", which we think you think is the word "copulation". the conversation turned "awkward!!", like you like to say. (Rising intonation, singing it, to prolong the awkwardness of any moment). But I was grateful to turn the conversation away from gun control and how we are so lucky for every day that you are not in the same room as someone who might pull out a semiautomatic. Like in Newtown, CT.
You then played a Disney videogame about an alligator who wants nothing more than to take a bath. You take your finger (or mine sometimes) and draw a path for the water to find its way to the right pipe. Sometimes there are bonus duckies. We are trying to get you to slow down and READ some of the words, which, by nature you are fighting. Your father is good at coaching you to break down the words into sounds (something called "chunking").
Your dad stopped you after too long, and told you that it was time to read. You countered that all your books were boring. I suggested you write a book of your own. Something good. You had a minor misunderstanding with your father about whether this was a justifiable replacement. You got a little whiny and your father got into his grownup voice and I escaped to my room while you guys hashed it out.
You wrote a great story about Rob the goldfish turning into a Rudolph figure and saving Christmas.
I wrote a story about a tree knocking on our door and you turning it into our Christmas tree.
When your cousins from Vermont arrived, you asked me to make an announcement so everyone could be quiet and you could read your story out loud. You did and it went over quite well. Even your dad was pleased. (I think it made you happy too!)
Just a note about myself. This is the only place where my stories will go. I've been very depressed lately. (No work, no money, few friends, our neighbor who is depressed and not available to be the friend I need-someone to cheer me up). Thank goodness I can write! Your mother was astonished everytime I told her about any of my art projects, "At least you can do that!" The Mousetraps, the ink doodles, the watercolors, everything. She didn't have any of that. No outlet.
While you were doing the video game, I read a story in the section of the NYTimes, about a sister who gave up trying to deal with the Mental Health system and has learned to just exist with her mentally ill brother.
http://www.nytimes.com/2012/12/16/fashion/modern-love-providing-comfort-when-a-cure-is-out-of-reach.html
It hit me close to "home", I would love to just exist with your mother and with Superman down the hallway. But the BiPolar Dragon rears its ugly head. She will never forgive me for forcing her to get help during her whirlwind. And Superman doesn't like to talk to people. At least not me. Even though he has written HUNDREDS if not thousands of emails to me. I expect him to write to me today, "a note just to say hi". Sometimes, it is hard for him "to even communicate in such a light form as writing".
I take him at his word, but it is lonely & painful for me.
And so your family came and went, crazy with children and your father trying to relate to his brother whom he rarely sees. This was me meeting them for the first time, or at least the first time to have a conversation. I tried to feel out the situation; your father hadn't invited me to brunch. And the conversation turned into itself like a Bey Blade battle, words sparking off each other. But I was as useless as a Lego character, off to the side. I went into my room, but kept the door open, just in case.
(If this was your mother, she would have made sure to invite me. To have me meet everyone. To bring me along. She did when her sister & family came by this summer, a week before her Whirlwind. We all sat together around the big table at 181, by the window. I crawled under it to sit next to you in the windowseat, remember how funny? Even your father was there, and we were all nice to each other. Genuinely nice. The last time.)
Cody kept coming in to my room when everyone was running around. Keeping me company. Rubbing me with his nose, looking pleadingly into my eyes. Knowing that we would be the ones left home alone.
I know now, how my grandmother must've felt. Ignored for not speaking English. An old woman. People see me, but I don't get a seat at the table. I used to tell this to your father, and he mentioned how I reminded him of your mother. Of her own loneliness. Her living across the street from her previous life. So I don't fight for attention anymore. I only talk to my computer.
I'm useful in helping you turn your reluctance of reading into something you can be proud of. My quiet little pieces of art, that even your aunt seemed amazed by. But here I sit, with tears in my eyes. Lonely and useless and wondering where my place in this world is. Still trying to figure it out.
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