A Novel Idea

Chapter One

It's fun to think of names. What do you name a girl who always leaves her bags unzipped and spilled? Who holds you up in grocery lines because her paint splattered pockets are stuffed with crumpled dollar bills? A 57 year old woman who talks aloud to her make believe friend named Otis who resides in her brain? A girl who’s half mad?
That's why I like to write. It explains life to me.

But the name thing. Like a mother birthing characters in a dream. I was meant to be a mother because sometimes the best roll model is a mistake. I caved. Big time. Free fall started when I found out my marriage wasn't gonna work.

Otis, the guy that lives with me in my head, is like a gay boyfriend who will tell you your butt looks too big. Guess some would call me schizophrenic, but it sure beats dining alone.

I was a good mother. You know, this guys a great carpenter and this girl’s a bridge builder. Otis says I was a better mom than wife. Shit, he’s always right. I’m the kind of mom who made her toddler walk in front of her brother’s swing to teach her not to get hit. Softly. I was so intent on swinging her around the centrifugal force thingy that she couldn’t hold on. Seven stitches on her sweet baby lips.

So, I want to write this book, see? I go to Border’s and mosey around the reference shelves. Gad, I love those professorial types.
I told my girls that there was this giant magnet attached to me that could smash through a bookstore’s window. I’d plop them down in the kid’s section and spend days there. I find a book that says to write on index cards. I go to CVS and buy the colored ones. Not being a number person, the sheer spread across my carpet overwhelmed me. They’ve been in a half-written box ever since. Along with the book. Found out miles and pain is the only way my story.

I was inclined to fall.
Like a branch the Gardener willfully prunes
Falling Into fresh soil.
The only kid I birthed is either dead, clueless, High
Priestess at a cult in Ghandi, or she simply would not
like to talk with me.

My heart children either
hate me or Love me too much.
(I wish we could really get to know one another)
As my Pastor Dave likes to say, Acceptance.


                 * * * *

Commandment For Today

Let Us Not Be Boring

Why do I Love Dylan Thomas?

“ I mean, he was ugleeeey!”

“More chins than a Chinese phonebook.”
My friend Steve used to say.
“So what’s the deal, here?”

My zombie mother waxing frayed wire matinee brain farts?

“I-SHE-ME”….. the fly on the wall lookin’ for roadkill?

Some kinda lesson from Mrs. O’Riley’s Junior Year sell an
Education degree pitch?


K.
He was a drunken poet. Guilty.
Welsh. Limey, same island. Right.
Caved early. Wrong.


I Love the word vanguard.
Art folks, need to be sustained, fed, and valued.
We need civilians who make the trains run on time.

B.

Letter to My Children

There are too many things to say I'm sorry for. Many linger in my mind that you brushed off like a skinned knee. Kids are resilient and wired to believe and trust and can take an amazing amount of parental blundering, but some mistakes replay like infomercials. The first thing I'd like to ask your forgiveness for is being too preoccupied with 'art' or being too busy to catch butterflies or play house with you. I'd brush you off from my knee. I'd buy you toys to take my place. Another that comes to mind is laying down stupid rules and not enforcing the more important ones. I was inconsistent when it was convenient for me. Impatience was a way to get the day done. I didn't teach you how to be loved and cherished. I fell short in so many ways.

More recently, I've expected you to grant instant understanding because i have this disease, see, and I haven't considered the emotional toll it's extracted from you. I've 'expected' youto have empathy and cut me slack. This is so wrong and I see the enormous damage it could cause if you weren't such a strong woman. I'm not writing this for you because that would mean expecting something back, but I need to ask for your forgiveness, whenever and if you are able.