Monday, November 9, 2009

Grave Digger

GRAVE DIGGER
June 16, 2007

The soil reluctantly yields to my borrowed shovel
Top layer so cool. Black
Below lies a happier, light brown
Roots thrust into the damp hole
Sweet Earth

Mosquitoes want to bite me
they light and leave
wary of the guilt and grief shimmering from my arms

My dog Bitty lies in the garage
Wrapped in the blanket she anguished on for days

Right now I could stop shoveling
Heed the cries of my hip and knees
Walk across the yard
Look past her glazed staring eyes
Stroke her velvet head. Bolt upright ears

But I’m desperate to bury her
before the sun goes down
before the buzzing flies find their way into
the baby blue blanket
before the agony
of my inability to save her
carries me into this hole

See? By the time
I've dug her grave
—is it deep enough?—
her delicate legs have already stiffened


Still. How unjust
Put her in a bag
Lift her onto the wheelbarrow

Careful, careful

At grave’s edge I’m stunned
How can I put her in this hole?
How can I lift her little body one last time?

Our big orange cat rolls at my feet
Flipping from side to side in the tall grass. Flirting
He use to swat at Bitty until she wrestled him to the ground
growling fiercely
biting and wetting his fur
then she stood over him, triumphant

And we would laugh
Get him Bitty we'd say. Get that cat

She was blind before we moved to this house
She learned to navigate the steps, the yard

Lately when I opened the door
she’d stay right there
Look up in my direction
Come on Bitty I’d say. Come on in

Now my transgressions rise
every harsh word
each impatient moment
A whirlwind of regret
circles my head and heart
Spins my vision.


The sun is setting. I gather my courage
Gather my prayers and
fill the hole
with dirt
with streaming tears
and with what used to be
my dog

Friday, July 10, 2009

Going Home


Ghosts in the Orchard

My father comes into town. Unexpected, uninvited. He drives to the store in Ann Arbor where my sister and I work and just walks right in. We squeal when we see him and clap our hands. Then we parade him around, introducing him to everyone we find. They’re delighted to meet our Dad.

We decide to go for a drive together. Dad wants to see the places where our family use to live. There are two. He’s walking ahead of us, fast, and Dora and I laugh as we follow him to the truck. He is very, very tall.

Soon we are sharking through tiny streets in Ypsilanti with houses that are very small. Dad parks the truck in front of the first house and we sit and look at it. I can barely remember living here; the green porch, the bare wooden floors. Dad is narrating into his window…”just before you were born, Dora. Yep. That summer I took a shovel and dug out a basement under this house…can still see where the yard is raised up a good six inches…” My sister and I smile at each other and watch Dad remember. We don’t stay long.

As we drive to the second house, the one in Saline on Willis road, the house we all loved, Dad tells us stories of his days as a county sheriff. “…Me and Chet was chasin some guy up Ecorse here, they gave us a ’66 Dodge that night. We must have been doing a hundred and ten up this stretch when that guy decided to give up and just stopped. We shot passed him of course…”

I ask my father, “What was he doing? Why were you chasing him?” I’m in the back seat.

“I dunno,” he shrugs. “Somebody called for help and we were chasing him.” We keep driving and Dad keeps talking and I look out the window at the rain. I think about my Father chasing bad guys and how simple things must have been for him in 1975. I think about how much easier it is lately for me to let Dad be Dad.

The drive into Saline is lush and when I point out one of the huge birds I keep seeing in little trees, he says, “Oh use to be you’d hardly ever see any red-tailed hawks when they were using all of that DDT. Now they’re everywhere.” I wonder how it is that as I grow older, my father gets smarter.

As we get closer to our old house, we’re quiet in the rain. Going back to Willis road is hard. We spent years and birthdays and storms here. My dog Freckles is buried here. I was married in the back yard here, right where I use to lay in the soft grass and laugh at the sky. And for all of my childhood, the cottonwood tree sang to me here—beautiful multiple women’s voices in harmony.

After our Mother left we finally got to know our father here. And when he really did sell the house and moved away from it all, I lay at the top of the stairs and cried harder than I can ever remember.

Dad slows the truck as we pass our house. It’s the same; same color, same neighbors, same flagpole. But twenty years later, the trees that line our long drive reach the sky. When we planted them they were just little sticks, like us, but we watered them every night hoping they’d grow. I close my eyes and imagine walking among them, showing them how I’ve much I’ve grown too.

As we pass our house and crest a hill, surprise, there’s a new road that takes us into what use to be an orchard. Massive, brooding houses have sprouted in tight circles where rows of gnarled apple trees once stood. Why would someone pay a bazillion dollars for a house that’s right next to another? Why would they fill in the sand pit, cut down the trees and cornfield?

I spent long summer days right where these houses are. The day Dora was born, Dad’s third and final daughter, he came home from the hospital and said to me, “Well it looks like you’re the boy.”

He was serious. He taught me to weld, hunt, box and ride a dirt bike. We built a dune buggy out of a VW frame and rode up and down the sand dunes. And at night we would sneak out to steal apples from the orchard.

The passage of time and space leaves me feeling small.

The Earth surrounding my home was everything to me, but by the time I was in Jr. High, things started to go bad at home. Quite bad, actually. Not even the singing trees could comfort me and my suffering seeped into what was suppose to be my educational experience.

I remember several of the high school teachers reaching out to me, trying to help a troubled student. Some were quite kind, others carried only contempt.

It would have been nice if one of the genuinely concerned teachers had known the right questions to ask, the right action to take. But this was the late seventies and we didn’t talk about such things in our little town. The good news is that I emerged from these times a Truth Speaker and today, I’m grateful for the each of life’s lessons. Proud of who I’ve become.

In high school, my friends came from several different “clicks.” Some Jocks, some Theater People, some Brains, but it was The Freaks that truly loved and accepted me. We were all outcasts, bonded together in our isolation. One of my attempts to fit in was by competing in the Miss Saline Pageant. I took 1st runner up and made all the Freaks proud. I felt like a spy, like I’d infiltrated the Popular Girls turf and quite easily at that. We had one of our own right there on stage, in the middle of the dirt at the fairgrounds.


Bobby Brown told me that night, right after the competition, “Girl, you were the finest girl up there.” He and I had been crowned King and Queen of The Freaks in 7th grade one day during lunch. Despite being a good foot shorter that me, Bobby was the coolest and most gorgous guy in our school, with crystal blue eyes and perfectly feathered brown hair. His attention that night made me feel like an actual Queen. But he was dead just a few years later, murdered outside of a Chicago bar late one night after an altercation. It’s still hard to believe he’s gone.

Amazingly, not all of the past has vanished. As Dad, Dora and I slowly drive around the cul-de-sac of monstrous houses, in what use to be our backyard, Dad has spots his old deer blind. It sits wedged in a tree, in a little square of woods that’s somehow remained intact. Standing sentinel on a little hill that overlooks the development.

As we pull away, we don’t say anything but I wonder about the children in these houses. What are their lives like? Where are their dogs buried? Do they play in Dad’s deer blind?

Can they hear the trees?

Monday, March 16, 2009

Journal Entry June 2008

I’m obsessed with my husbands affair. I’m obsessed with this woman. I look for her car. I have visions of them together. It coils around me like a life sucking python and squeezes the sanity, the dignity from me.

That's when I go to Bikram Yoga.
Ah. Yoga.

This is where I create my own healing crisis. Where I put myself in a 105 degree room and focus and work for 90 minutes and balance on one leg for an eternity while pulling the other leg straight behind me and listen to a stream of information from the teacher and connect my body with my mind and say over and over again, “thank you thank you,” even though I feel like I’m going to die.

But I don't die. I keep breathing and working and praying and sweating out toxins and pain and hate and soon my skin is glistening and my clothes are soaking wet and my body is listening to my mind and I am strong and I am calm all at the same time. And I do this TO MYSELF. I put myself into this insane environment. I honestly think if I weren't in such trauma already, there's no way I would even try it.

But I do. And in this way I control how and when I release my emotion, how I work out my pain. It's not my cheating husband or my dying dog or anything external pushing me to fix myself. I do it. To myself.

I say, Self. Today we’re going to yoga.
And my Self says, oh no. We can't go there. The yoga studio is right next to where Cheating Husband and Skanky Whore work together. What if I see them? I can't go near that building, near that part of town, I can't take it and besides I’m too tired and my knees hurt and my heart is broken and I just want to lay in bed and cry while the kids are gone and I need to bla bla bla

But in the end, the Me that’s determined to take back my life wins and I drive my excuse-making sad little self to the yoga studio and I look right at the building next door where my husband met the woman of his dreams and works there with her now in infidelity bliss and I sometimes cry and I sometimes get very angry but I always park and climb the stairs to the stinky hot studio. And once I’m there and I'm lying on the mat getting used to the heat and stretching out my hips and back, I remember why I do this.

Because here, I do extraordinary things. I learn to work hard and then quickly recover. I stand still and I control my mind and my body with my breath. I focus.

And I remember that can do the impossible.

Sunday, March 15, 2009

Trauma recovery advice tip #1

When in the throes of extreme emotional trauma, try not to be reactive and make "poor choices" you may later regret. Especially public displays of creative vengeance.

At the time you may feel as if you're taking back your power. Your friends may high five you and say, "you're my Hero!" but seriously, you should carefully think through any potentially stupid moves.

For instance, do not under any circumstances, post something like this on Craigslist:
Free
Cheating Husband

Very handsome, very muscular and very sexy. Very charming. Great in the sack. Gets so drunk he throws up out the car window. Screws stupid whores from work. Brilliantly turns everything around on you until you wonder why you were mad in the first place or how you screwed up.

Pretends to care about your feelings until you really need him, then he ridicules you for being needy. Makes you feel crazy for being insecure. Screws stupid whores he met through his friends.

Free. Available immediately. You haul.


Trust me on this.

Saturday, March 14, 2009

So, my husband had an affair

So, my husband had an affair. Ran off with some piece of shit he worked with. In fact, he brought her into our house while I was gone with the kids.

As soon as I came home, I knew there'd been another woman in my house. How? Because it's my house.

It was brutal. I threw all of his stuff out on the front lawn, called the police screaming that they better get over here because I didn’t know what was going to happen.

I’ll never forget that cop asking, M’am? Are there any weapons in the house?

I’M THE WEAPON, I screamed into the phone. NOW GET OVER HERE.

Of course by the time they arrived, things were much calmer. The neighbor kid had come over and stood glaring at my husband. I'll stay right here until you tell me you're okay, he said.

My husband picked up his clothes, guitars, shoes and anything else I could throw out our front door, and left. Then my neighbor kid said to me, you know you did the right thing?

I did? I said.

Yes you did, he said, taking a long pull from his American Spirit. Cause he was thinking with what’s between his legs and that’s all cool and shit, till you see your brown leather jacket laying in the front yard.

This from a 21 year old kid. Brilliance.

I thought I was going to die. I couldn’t eat. I couldn’t sleep. I couldn’t drive, work or parent. And I had to see him just about every day because this it was summertime and we didn’t have money for childcare, so we swapped the kids often.

He moved 8 blocks away, took up with his new love and the two of them paraded around my neighborhood living it up. I had anxiety attacks every time I left my house. I had anxiety attacks thinking about leaving my house.

I woke up every morning with a crushing weight on my chest. I went to sleep that way too. But as time passed, I trained myself to refocus my thoughts away from him and her, and start sorting out how to take back my life.

Right after I busted him I remember thinking, “what kind of woman do I want to be?” I knew that right then was the time to make that happen.

I knew what I didn't want to be. I didn't want to be a victim. I didn't want to run after a man who obviously didn't want me.

And I knew I didn’t want to spend any more time than necessary feeling unloved. Unworthy. I've done enough of that. I wanted to take back my life.

So that’s what I did. I stepped out of the victim role. I became the kind of woman I want to be.

I fixed my life. And so can you.