Spelling bees and other childhood activities

Yesterday was a shockingly debilitating day; I woke at 7 with an attack of sadness, and I call it that because although most days I wake up with nostalgia and sadness, it is not as intense. Yesterday it was sharp and acute, I had a stomach ache and could not eat, could not go back to sleep, wanted only to cry, could not cry. We went to the post office to mail the newsletters and meant to go to Office Depot to return a printer but I had left the receipt at home, and when I came back I felt that I literally could not go on... I told Jim I would go take a nap, but when I lay down I started to weep... gut-wrenching sobbing that took everything I had. I thought it would be better to die than to feel such intense pain. At some point Jim came in and asked how I was, and I told him I missed my daughter. And he was kind and loving, he said she surely loved me, but the part of me that takes over at those moments was sure this was not true; I felt totally hopeless. He spoke as a true Marxist of the hope in the current terrible doings throughout our planet. The rational part of me agrees, but there was nothing rational about yesterday's Silvia. At some point he said I could just call her and tell her that I missed her and I love her. And although I nodded my head no, I began to think this was something I could do.

Eventually I stopped sobbing enough to make the call... I reached her answering machine and quite simply said, I miss you and I love you. Then I thought of calling Ivan. We had a wonderful conversation about a week ago, almost two hours, and we have not always gotten along as well. He was pleasantly surprised when I just said, I just called to say that I miss you and I love you. I said that I had just called to say that, but he and I talked for close to an hour, and it was a very good call. Not one of the 'plastic' (my daughter's word) or Mickey-Mouse relationship moments that I hate so much.

One of the topics of conversation was whether or not Cati's partner 'likes' or respects me, and of course we differ there, because once again there have been two incidents that were uncalled for cruelty and almost despotic disrespect. The first one came when I was visiting during the pregnancy and she fainted and hit her head on the wall, and I wanted to ride with them to the hospital, and he was vociferous in saying that he loved my daughter very much and he was taking her. I had not suggested anything different, but I was there, she is my daughter, I was terrified. I was left out of it all.

I can't, not today when I am more 'sane' or yesterday or when it happened, put a good spin on his reaction. I understand that he was himself worried about her and about their baby, but the over-reaction is not good, and the intent to leave me out is quite clear. He does care about family, but I am not a part of 'his' family, and apparently I am not to be a part of hers anymore either.

Last night after we went and came back from getting the printer installed in the computer (at some point I was sitting outside on the sidewalk/berm and I called the house and Joan said her father had gone to the Palestine vigil and I felt suddenly bereft and overwhelmed, and I thought quickly of how to get under some car and end it all, the same reaction I had at 17 when my mother told me she would not be coming to my graduation because she was going to Europe, and I was crossing that very busy four-lane highway in Puerto Rico and I thought, I can rush into this thoroughfare and it will be all over, I will put an end to all the pain, but just then Jim drove up and that was so amazing...

One of the things I said to Ivan was that if I ever did something because the pain was too great I wanted him to know it was not because of anything he had ever done, but because the pain was unbearable, and I talked about Bardem's performance in El Mar Adentro, but he said sorry, but he would not give me a pass on that one, and said, which was quite funny, what kind of a thing would it be on Jim, who would not have gotten even his warranty period...

Jim says he does not want to trade me in or make a warranty claim (smile).

In the evening in our room we watched Spellbound, a wonderful documentary about the National Spelling Bee, and I all of a sudden remembered that I was a spelling bee winner about six or so months after I had first come to the US; I was able to spell the big words, including decapitated and bouillabaisse, but could not spell rye; I had no clue what rye was, had never seen or eaten any rye products... And my mother never came to the school or the regional competition with me, not then or the following year at the Miami Herald; I won a pen and she made a snide remark about the lowness of the price, she was happier when I won a similar contest in Cuba in second grade and the first prize was a year's free tuition at Academia Baldor. And then there was the year (fourth grade?) when I won 'best overall student' and I got to bring home the gold medal, but it was to be brought back at the end of a specified period; there were remarks made about that and I got, as I always did, a can of peach halves, and was allowed to take the first two peaches, but then the rest were to be shared with everyone else, 'because it is so important not to be selfish, Silvia, no ser egoísta."

Watching all the work by the parents, or when they could not help the contestants, their presence at the various contests brought back so much pain and dejection that I thought I had to write this down, so it could be a part of my grieving process...

I am better today. I slept well, I am loved and I love myself. I will survive.

Loss

Every day I mourn the loss of my children; some days the loss is sharp as the pain of a burn or a new cut; I want to scream, sob, hide away, tear my clothing, die. I think about the offer of pills to ease the pain, but I cannot do this; somehow I feel that it is my pain to bear, to live with, and it will become easier, I pray in time it will not hurt so much.

Somewhere in between the lullabies and the home-made baby food, the nursing and the play and the kisses, I did or didn't do, something so that all of my babies have grown up with pain. I thought if I went to therapy, took them to therapy, was willing to withstand any amount of pain or abuse for them, they would be healed of the pain I grew up with, the gratuitous and casual cruelty in the house of my mother, and they would literally inherit the earth. But somehow, and yes of course I am being codependent and blaming myself, there is no one else here this morning in this room except the well-known pain which announced itself as soon as I came back from the bathroom, my love was not enough.

It is easy to blame the system which Jim always does, and surely some of this is aided by this cruel system that enshrines greed... but the sick part of me at heart says "You were not loveable. Your mother did not love you and most of your children have barely tolerated you."

When I get out of this mode, and I will, later today when I put on the activist robes, sometimes the pain is replaced by rage, but that is the sickest part of it. Anger helps me cope, it does the quid pro quo that is always thrown in my face, but right now, it very simply hurts. I have been wanting to sob, have been sobbing inside for the past hour.

With the children go the grandchildren; the pain is mine to bear, but I will not willingly put myself at the mercy of anyone again. The casual cruelty is true enough; the casual indifference is quite real, and possibly my needs and hopes are unreasonable, but they are what I have left... to be loved as I am for who I am, without needing to do anything else for anyone or bring anything to the table. But I will neither submit to emotional blackmail nor, goddess help me, perpetrate it on anyone else. This is what I have elected, and I stand by that.

Back in rage/Hiroshima-Nagasaki

Pretend love, pretend words, the things I fell for in the years when I wanted to be loved despite it all. Not feeling worthy or lovable, I had to push the envelope always... And gifts were essential, because no gifts meant no love, as had so often been the case in the house of the accountant and his wife, my mother.

I am pulled in ways that are impossible to bear; I am thanked endlessly, lest I figure out that these thanks are wrung out of despair... Behind it all is the resentment that things are not as they always were, without order or boundary, without the ability to do anything or do nothing in a world that consists only of yourself. Funny that once again I am in a situation where a narcissist attempts to rule everything. But this time I am here to say no more, I am here to set and protect my boundaries. No more guilt, no more laying down on the floor and saying, please step on me (unless in a nice massage...)

Yesterday at the gates of the Livermore Conversion Project we heard a Japanese survivor who was 16 at the time of the bombing of Hiroshima. He told of being in school and seeing a bright blast, and then being blinded by sound and noise. But then "it was deathly quiet and pitch dark." Only later would he realize that the roof of the school had fallen on their heads. He talked about seeing people whose eyeballs had popped out of their sockets, and others seeing confused people trying to put their intestines back into their bodies. He watched people all day and all night, as he walked home, holding out their arms in pain... He is one of the Hibakusha, and we had a computer linkup so that they in Japan could see our candles in front of the gates of one of the two places in the US that manufactures every bomb we make against the people of the world.

How many of our children even think about the destruction of Hiroshima and Nagasaki, when we unleashed an inhuman bomb that killed a quarter of a million people and laid waste to two cities, to mothers and their infants, elderly men and women, vegetation, hospitals, indiscriminate destruction.

And when we talk about Japanese imperialism, the truth is that the U.S. wanted to get into the war in Europe but public opinion was strongly against it, so the U.S. manipulated Japan into attacking us so they would have public support to enter the war. We froze Japanese assets and blocked trade. We never cared about British, French or Dutch imperialism in the Pacific, only Japanese. True, Japan had a treaty with Italy and Germany, but the Japanese had made diplomatic concessions to avoid war. We stalled, and as soon as the bomb was made, we flattened two cities and a whole country. It was unnecessary, it was brutal, it was inhumane. Empire always is.

The love of the dramatic...

Yes, it is in my genes, but I wonder if the excess anger, which is also a part of my children's lives, is also in the genes or is a part of some chain of past life rage that we carry around, and never shed. I have decided to shed it. As happened when I went back to therapy to control my anger, not to get rid of it because as I told Dr. Trook, it has saved my life on more than one occasion, I want to have the ability to become angry and to let that anger fuel my actions to change the things that make me angry, read here injustice and war and man's inhumanity to man, but not to let it rule my life. The love of drama is a bit harder to give up, but I would rather have interesting but not necessarily crisis mode, which has been my favorite mode these past few years, decades, life? So, yes, I want the ability to fight back efficiently and successfully, without drama.

sometimes
"Beware of feeling yourself unfairly treated."
The Course in Miracles

sometimes
despite the best made plans
life throws you lemons
a spanner in the works

and when you've prayed,
thought, meditated
sat silently before a teacher
humbled yourself before your god

it hurts to find yourself so human
so prone to hurt and disappointment
to bitter rage, a pacifist converted
to a raging killer, sometimes

the years drop far away
and you behave in adolescent
ways you had forgotten;
you scream obscenities

at life, the way things are,
the rain on a June Saturday,
the pissing of the cat
on your wool jacket, sometimes

the best that one can hope for
is a quiet recollection as the storm
is beating on the roof, a moment
of sincere apology for rants, sometimes

in letting go of rage,
a smile wells up within
the confines of the belly
and grows and grows and grows.

It is working, slowly but surely

The awareness that I need not give it all up, give in, although I can still surrender if I wish to do so, but in the way that one surrenders to an experience, to love, to the smell and being of a flower, not because of guilt. I did not go to yet another faraway meeting just to hold a friend's hand when actually she was being introduced to a professional. I did not at first understand that I needed to let her walk on her own and not be her muleta, but the fact is that when I decided, I am not going, and sent the email saying, I am available here, I can answer questions from here, it felt wonderful! I felt as though I needed to say, good job, and I kissed my own arm... this was sort of funny, but you would have had to have been there...

The same thing with the fact that the level of anger at my snapping back at my own true loves is out of sight, but this is one of the things that happens as one heals and becomes less ready to take abuse... I feel really really good.

I just printed out a schedule of meetings for Al-Anon and ACOA, and we are going this week to a first meeting. Recovery, here I come!

No more guilt

The guilt is real; I should have divorced earlier, should have spared the children the years of deterioration. When one is in a dysfunctional relationship and family, particularly having grown up in a very dysfunctional relationship and family, it is impossible to know what is best. I spent years and countless amounts of money trying to 'fix' the relationship. I knew I could not do it by myself. I hoped it would be possible to find whatever was broken, to mend it, repair it. I can understand in my sane mind that I was attracted to someone unwilling to commit because of my early family background, but I wonder if at a younger age when the hormones are raging it is not harder to see that, especially when, as a full-blown codependent individual, one is always looking for a cause to fight, a crisis to fix, a world to save... The things I have understood through years of therapy, workshops, spiritual 'interventions' are not easier to put into practice because they are understood...

But if I am to proceed, I am setting guilt aside. I am explaining from now on not for anyone else but just so that I can understand the process and work, one second at a time, to ensure it is not repeated. I know from work with people in recovery that it is easier said than done. I can only repeat to myself what I said years ago, when I realized, as a wounded adolescent, that someone had to put an end and a stop to the sadness in my family, all the extended families, brought apart by resentments and hatreds and money. Yes, money, in all of them, has been a big part of the problem. In my own family, in the families of my children, all of these things perdure and persist. I wonder if the next thing to do is to take an ax to the dirty 'dishes' in this family and all the 'dirty secrets, resentments and hatreds." I have always been willing, at least as far as I was concerned, to be challenged, hopefully in a space made safe by love. I did this in family therapy, therapy and workshops with my oldest and youngest sons, group and individual therapy with all the children. I have always been willing to lay out my heart, my feelings, my needs, for the common good. Are any of them ready? Do they understand that if they do not do the work now, it will plague their children and their grandchildren? So, for a bit of dark humor, this is something that really happened, several years ago, in the Poconos:

Perduring amid axes and dirty dishes

Yesterday I took an ax
to my dirty dishes. I was in bed
and my daughter and her fifty-seven flavors
of adolescent renegades
had taken my car out for breakfast.
Night before two kids had shown up

at the front door near eleven, car stuck
in the snow, and they had slept somewhere
on sleeping bags or floor or blankets.

The sink was full again.
The toilet in the bathroom that we never use
was clogged again.

I took the plunger and shit flowed.
I coughed, vomited, remembered
the ax.

I have ALWAYS wanted to take an ax
to dirty dishes.
I left messages taped to my locked door,

took the ax to the kitchen sink,
demolished plates, bowls, glasses, mugs.
It was oddly satisfying.

One of the notes on the door said
I had taken care of the dirty dish problem
permanently. I had.

Axes are satisfactory permanences.
They perdure
as I perdure.

Returning home, my son and his Taiwanese friend
and my foster exchange child from Bretagne
were washing dishes... The ax had been hidden.

The house sparkled. I had been gone six hours
and planned never to return (I tend
to overdramatize, it's a genetic flaw).

Small flan or custard dishes had been placed
on a wicker table by the couch, with round
blue candles, a Delft vase with dying roses,
two wooden cats.

I perdure.
The roses aren't doing so well.

How to decipher lies

Years ago I dated a man, an inappropriate man, one of the many charmers I related to and slept with and might have almost married, had I not discovered among other things that he believed sex for pay was a 'sport' and had no problem with the hiring of 'ladies of the night' to entertain his business friends. He did teach me one very important lesson. He was studying or had studied psychology, and he said I paid too much attention to what people said rather than what they did, and quoted that saying "Amores son obras, que no buenas razones." To illustrate the point he took off his shoe, an expensive moccasin, and started telling me how much he loved me, and everytime he said "Pero yo te quiero mucho" he would hit me on the head with the shoe... I got it the second time around (smile)...

But I have come a ways from that early girl, I talk about the past and write about it because silence perpetuates a sick society of secrets and deception; writing, talking, telling, sharing, promotes healing and is empowering. Had I been able to talk about what was going on in the accountant's house and obtain some help and not felt so much a shit I would have been much better... because somehow, even the priest agreed, it was my fault, I was one of the shitty people in the world, and somehow again, everything that happened was my fault. When we invaded Panama, one of my neighbors came looking for me to ask me why I had one it... and when I didn't get it, he said, oh, I am sure somehow it is your fault, your husband always says everything is... because I married, of course, the man who pointed out it was my fault, and have permitted all and sundry, in particular sundry, to perpetuate that myth... As a child I was la inventora de la sopa de ajo, and later on I became la madre de los tomates, and so, again, I might as well have become the alcoholic whore (with apologies to all alcoholics, whores, and other admixtures of the same...)

Qui tacet consentit, and I am not sorry and I will not be silent.

Perhaps I have underneath it all been controlling; I told my husband he would have to sign an affidavit saying he was marrying a bossy bitchy broad, but I have also practiced self-awareness for many years now. I know one of the reasons I never drank or took drugs other than the occasional wine glass or the tasting of marihuana is that I am terrified of losing control. In the occupied territories that I lived in as a child, constant vigilance and awareness were required to survive.

Finally, whether there are reasons why my own children have felt I meddled (I did laundry when it was not mine to do, cooked food when it had not been asked of me), the punishment feels harsher than warranted... there goes the criminal lawyer speaking again. I have retired, but she has not (little smile)

From another time, years ago in Pennsylvania:

and once again, whatever

everyone is writing moths spidersilk
the writing of poets from faraway
and long ago and the real ones
didn't know anymore than you
that any of it was worthwhile
they couldn't stop
words on paper papyrus the stone
of the cave was breath
...................

......
-
x

i am here on a cold two degree night
waiting for potatoes to boil, soften,
become mush, in my room with two layers
of clothing and wanting somehow
coat hat gloves inside the house
with lousy windows sliding door
icicles hanging from the corners
reading lines words the exhalations
from North Carolina or Miami, Canada
or Calcutta, my blood breath neurons linked
one giant tracery of poesy to the blood breath
neurons of one Jack or Djuana or a Kelly
or Lynette, or Ankush in his room with dog
and brother, or any of my sisterbrothers
in this dream we share, or nightmare
on some days, a common yearning
for a spray of beauty, silvery dusk,
lunar bayings of the wolf within us all
^^

^^
?

the ibuprofen i was taking
can cause hives or facial swelling, asthma, shock
i couldn't breathe at kitchen sink
one neverending wheeze-
a poem incomplete
a filament of death beside the small
delicate crocus, purple petals
bright against the icy window,
knocked head against the sink, the walls,
breath wouldn't come
thus sometimes with a poem
which is hanging in coocoon
and will not budge, my life did not
flash as they will tell you, i concentrated
on the breath that wouldn't
not with a bang a whimper but a wheeze



???????&
i played the piano in a former life
malefemale i don't know
when i forget that i am i
and sit at keyboard i can play
as if my hands were those of someone
else and when i read another's lines
until my sight blurs and the breath
from other shores is mine and i am
them li po and jack and federico
ankush and neruda tara and nicolas
guillén, i tango with djuana's
compositions, watch birds with lynzie,
grieve in laurel's oldest shoe-

it's almost finished
the ache for conversation vibrates
in the piles of slush in front of my garage
some days i question every breath
each drop of menstrual blood
each poem line or child or word

some days i am content with breath

i have no muse, not anymore,
he quit and left for warmer parts
no longer do i wake with things i need
to write or songs for my guitar

it's done

--------------------------------------------------

PROMISE FOR THE DAY: I will play at least one song on my guitar EVERY day.