Answer to the Riddle

The answer to lastweeks poem, "The Riddle", is:

Your Dreams

Memoirs: My First Catch

Memoirs: My First Catch


I am apprenticing with a midwife, Gena, and we have been called to a birth in the mountains. I get there first and then another lady who is there to help. Gena and I have been working together for several months and I am feeling confident. Labor is progressing quickly and I am in the kitchen, getting the supplies set up and in order. Someone calls me that the baby is coming and I run into the adjacent living room. A pearlescent bubble of the amniotic sack emerges from the mother’s vagina and the baby’s head floats into it. What an amazing sight! I quickly pop the membranes and remove them from the baby’s face so he can breathe without inhaling amniotic fluid.

This is my first catch, an experience never to forget!


Prema Rose

Memoir: Shoes...Wedgies

When I think of shoes I think of my mother’s wedgies. She never wore flat shoes, and by the time I knew her, her days of higher-heeled spectator pumps was nearing an end. She had wedgies in different colors and fabrics, and told me, after many years of wearing them, the cords in her heels and ankles were so tight, that she couldn’t wear flats anymore.
She would use the white water-based liquid shoe polish that came in a bottle, to clean up her waitress shoes. Pouring the liquid into the cap, she’d dab a small sponge that accompanied the bottle, to put the polish on her food stained shoes. They’d have to sit and dry for while before she could wear them.
These wedgies weren’t the 3”-4” ones that they sell know as a kind of retro summer shoe. There were about an inch or two high in the back, with straps crisscrossing over her red painted toes, and coming around her ankle to close with a fastener.
My mother, Virgo that she was, always had a wiggle when she walked. Most Virgos have a peculiarity to their movements and their speech. Hers was a cute wiggle that got her customers attention more than once. Her brown hair was wavy, shoulder length with a pompadour curl in the front. Red lips emerged from high cheekbones and her smile was readily available.
When I think of shoes, it would be her shoes, several pair of open-toed wedgies, come rain, shine or snow.
Jyoti

The Lake - poetry

I sit looking across the lake
Watching the sunlight moving in the water.
The lake sighs from its depths
Silently watering my soul
Bringing me home.

Ode to a Honda

I have been driving Honda cars for over 25 years; to date, I have had three. My 1st Honda was a little light blue station wagon, I have no idea what her vintage was, but she was used when we bought it before my son was born. Her name was Old Blue. My 2nd Honda was the large square wagon with dark tinted windows; it was used and blue as well. It was my office on wheels, lots of interior space, plus it had high clearance for barreling through the snow. I always thought of that car as a juvenile delinquent but I loved it. It was November of 1992 and my family was getting ready to drive to Missouri for Thanksgiving. I was short on time so I took him to Grease Monkey for a quick oil change the day before we left. By the time we got to Springfield, Mo the engine was wrecked. I didn’t know how bad the damage was but I decided to take him to my friendly mechanic as soon as I got home. We added a lot of oil on that return trip. We found out the engine was blown, but he carried us all the way back to Colorado and delivered us to our doorstep. I still think of him has Brave Heart.

I bought Idgey on December 5th, 1992. It was the first car I had ever purchased new, 36 miles on the odometer, and Bob talked the dealers into free air conditioning. She is an opalescent light green, the color of the movie, Fried Green Tomatoes ~ one of my favorite books that they made into an excellent movie. Idgey was one of the main characters so naming my sporty new car was easy.

To me an automobile is NOT an inanimate object. Every component of my car is made of metals and plastics ~ which I assume are compounds of mixed cellular structures. She needs good air, drinks fluids and, on rare occasions, may emit a little gaseous fume. Even if my theory is weak on facts, my conclusion is the same. She is my friend; she has a heart and feelings. She has been there for me in the good times and the bad, in sickness and in health. She has listened as I sing loudly to the radio, witnessed my tears and prayers, and turned a blind blinker to my cussing and gesticulations. I made up a song for her that I sing every once in awhile. Every year on my birthday we pretend that it is her birthday as well and we go the car wash and get “the works” inside and out; I pay extra for a squirt of “new car smell”.

This February (15 years later) I was having trouble with my heater and I took my car into Hoshi Motors, who have become trusted friends these last 25 years. I asked them to look her over during a routine oil change. As I stood at the counter they gently explained what a head gasket was, and that Idgey’s was going bad. I tried to keep up a pleasant banter as I questioned them about what to expect and what did this really mean? The prognosis was grim, “It could last for two days or another two weeks, but it is going to fail you one day soon. You need to start thinking about a new car.” I started crying on the road home and I cried for days.

I can barely imagine life without Idgey. She takes care of me. Many years ago, coming across Kansas I-70 on a return trip from my parent’s house, I suddenly felt the power disappear. In front of me was an off ramp. Idgey coasted up the ramp, made a left hand turn over the interstate and silently deposited me in front of a pay telephone at a convenience store. She took care of me ~ there is no other way to describe it. I called Hoshi, they checked my file and told me what had probably happened and how much it would cost to get it fixed. When I got back home, I called my insurance agent to ask if I could be reimbursed for the tow truck. “You didn’t need to pay for that, it is included in your insurance!” he exclaimed. “It is?” I asked incredulously. “Nothing ever goes wrong with my car so I didn’t remember that.”


It has been five months since they told me her time was near. I keep a very good record of all the antifreeze I add and I religiously watch the heat gauge, it will be one of my first warning signs. I am still getting over 400 miles per tank of gas and she drives up Boulder Canyon like a trooper. She is my friend, my ally, my office on wheels. When her time is really up, I have a phone number of a charity that I can donate her body to, and she will continue to serve as a learning tool for an aspiring young mechanic. I think that she would appreciate that. But for now, I will continue to sing her song for as long as she will listen.

* annette

Flower and Fear

Flower and Fear


Think about a bud…it holds the flower within, waiting for its time. It exists in its potential till the right circumstances come about. Water, soil, nutrients and light all assist in its emergence. We welcome the bloom and its beauty into our hearts, receiving its gift.

Fears. It’s hard to imagine that you may one day embrace and welcome them into your heart like a flower but it is possible. Why would someone even want to? Because if you do not they are like mines waiting buried till some innocent victim sets it off, often ourselves.

We have buried fears along the way for many reasons, from overwhelm to trauma to judgments, to being too young to know what else to do. We often have no idea how to find them no less release them. Sometimes life gives us a chance to let them go and we do. Other times they get buried deeper. Many of us walk around with fears just beneath the surface. We mostly stop listening to them in hope they would just go away. If I don’t look there it doesn’t exist, right? We rarely look them straight in the eye and deal with them. But maybe we should.

Why bother with them? If they are being quiet and hidden, why make trouble? For one thing they are rarely quiet forever. For another we are expending energy keeping them at bay. We maneuver around them so as to not wake them up. In other words they control us. They own us. But we don’t see it that way, we have changed or rearranged reality to fit an edited version that is our own. We craft beautiful stories, heartbreaking stories, and scary stories; just about anything you could think of to not go THERE. We have patterns impossible to pin down that are being controlled by a fear and often a belief of some kind that is attached to the fear. They lock arms around each other, (the fear and the belief) dive deep into your being and you don’t even know what happened. You just know you no longer go to the beach, or like your brother or what ever quirkey or possibily logical thing it may be. It may not and most likey won’t register that clearly. Just something that happened and got filed away.

They are things we name, put in a box, sometimes put a label on and place of a shelf. Often we have to make room for them in order to allow them to emerge. When we learn to embrace them and welcome them we will have made great strides in setting ourselves free. Our other choice is to allow them their moment in the sun. They may come out yelling, punching, crying, hurting, shameful, or some other color. They won’t last long. They have a limited time span. But they often need a moment of acknowledgement before they dissipate.

Sometimes we’ll find the thoughts that got stuck in there with them that were so inhospitable that we locked them up. Much time we aren’t even aware of what we’ve done. We were so much younger and it was all we knew what to do. This is were we can reach in and allow what ever it is to emerge. Welcome, encourage, allow and accept the piece that got disconnected, put away, and buried. You’ll feel so much lighter, clearer. You will not need to pay all those storage fees that were getting pricier all the time.

Mary

Memoir: SHOES

In the l940s a shoe called a spectator was quite popular. They were dressy shoes with a high heel, or medium heel. These were my Mom’s favorite shoes. Their colors were two-toned, either brown & white, navy & white, black & white or red & white. These shoes epitomized anal rigidity to me. And being my mother’s shoes they were always spotless, looking like they had never been worn.

Around the time I became aware of my Mom’s spectators was when I had my first memory of being sexually abused by my father. Funny to link these two together, but here they are, almost walking hand in hand. The spectators had little tiny holes on the darker part of the shoe, accentuating the dark and the light, where they touched. Also, on the dark part where it laid on the white of the shoe, it was trimmed with what looked like pinking shears. Remember those? They made everything look like a zigzag. As I began to unfold as a little child, with memories of sexual abuse being intermingled with the need for perfection, the spectators became a great metaphor. My psyche was being shaped with little tiny holes as the darkness formed in my young life. I felt I was being torn between good and evil, as if I had been cut with pinking shears. But the spectators moved on in an orderly manner, whereas I was back and forth between confusion and senselessness. Not much changed as I continued to grow up. My Mom never knew about the abuse until I was in my late 30s, although the experts say the mother always knows. In my awareness she was too busy making everything as clean and perfect as possible. My Dad’s alcohol problem worsened, the abuse had stopped around l4.

Now, in my later years, I realize I have never worn spectators, even though they are back in style. They wouldn’t be conducive to my way of life. Much discernment has come about through the years, helping to fill the tiny holes formed so long ago. The shoes I wear now are for comfort, with a little style, creating a great ease in walking forward.
Patricia