arriving just after dawn
trees bend in the breeze
by midday we swallow sand
the beach’s beauty tainted
a hot wind to bring a new season
I could put my hand out the window
make imaginary waves
pretend that my rhythmic motions
are wings carrying me elsewhere
instead I stare into the distance
mountains masked by haze
and wait for the moment
my moment
when wind will mean more
than bent branches
and the coming of summer
i carry the heat
atop three backpacks.
i pull back hair,
offer water,
divide up my lunch,
and chant beneath beating sun,
we will make it
later i pedal home,
listen to my girls’ requests,
and drive in circles
to the park i know how to find
ever so perfectly on my bicycle
they play in the creek
behind billowing bushes.
i grade my co-teacher’s papers
and wait for rain
tonight clouds can’t cover
the almost-perfect circle of moon.
i drive down the daily road
and have me a moment
you think i shouldn’t have
it will be just like that moment
when you left her on the trail
and i found suitable food.
that one when i wrote out the schedules,
sent out the emails,
and worked all the jobs
that no one would touch.
you know? can you feel it
coursing through my veins
as i release myself to fantasy?
or are you trapped
behind your version of reality
that with three backpacks
and all the summer sun
you would never quite escape from?
we have given up on society.
first it was the tv.
we still have internet, a screen, a wii,
but do we fit in?
now i will spend more days
than ever before
enjoying the beauty of a bike.
we will be the only family i know
with one car
it is crazy i know–
it’s my middle name,
the same one who married at twenty,
who said yes to them,
who writes these words
on our girlfriend’s birthday
but if you could see my world?
there are no commercials.
just the wind at my back
as i pedal home,
the lyrics i love,
the audiobooks i long for,
and the peace of knowing
we can keep those dollars
in our pocket
and our children will still have us
at the end of every day
a three thousand pound weight,
sacks of gold too heavy to lift.
if i could fill them with feathers
and build myself a pair of wings?
i would fly right into the sky
and release myself from monetary need
instead i face a financial dilemma–
drop the gold i can’t quite carry
into the gaping hole of a beast
who will swallow it whole and us too,
leaving behind nothing but wisps
lighter than feathers, unable to fly?
or hold fast to a dream that flies
into every moment of my sleeping wake,
forget the beasts that bear down on me,
and throw my sacks of gold into the sea
as i fly my way to a tomorrow that
i have waited for years to belong to me?
we have left the pretty pink bar,
beauty slipping from sky in silent flakes.
the roads are not icy yet,
but moist in anticipation:
the wipers push away drops
(we have no possibility of sliding)
i watch the silent storm
move into my city,
remembering him in eighth grade,
so tiny and cute,
turning around in social studies
and making fun of the teacher
he is not here,
but rides along the slick streets
inside my mind as i pull back
the cautious, modest man he has become,
a beauty in the Beauty Bar
with his grace and patience,
more perfect than any dress
he could ever create
for the runway of his dreams.
sucking the marrow of life
words first heard at fourteen
pushing my pedal forward as i
think of possibilities unseen
adrenaline swoops into shoe
as mountains back my day
what will i say when i call him,
knowing we no longer play?
the soundtrack of my mood
comes in faster than the clouds–
can i put in pen, scribe my soul
the words i cannot say aloud?
three in a row, oblivious,
my girls will never quite know
the pain in each passing moment
whose life lyrics ebb and flow.
the higher shift is near
at our fingertips
we could stay in first gear
or fly on our wingtips
we’ve driven here before
getting lost along the way
can we dream no more
and make the cross-country sway?
i wait with clutch in hand
and drive into the night
surrounded by endless land
i wait for the time without fright.
the car picks up speed
and we slide back in the zone
it’s everything we need
yet every fear of being alone.
I should be at school. I shouldn’t have selfishly taken the bike out at 5:15 to ride thirty-four miles because I already missed a day due to weather. Instead I should have slept in a bit, gotten the girls up, taken them to school myself. But in truth, I just couldn’t face that and everything else. I needed the ride to listen to a book, to think about someone else’s problems, fake or not, worse off than me.
Instead of meandering the middle school hallways, I sign her out of the class she can’t sit still in and drive across town. We sign in and wait. I have ample time to stare at the walls: mismatched pictures in plastic, falling-apart frames, a fairy scene in one, a child’s teary face in another. A bulletin board with peeling paper posters. Walls that are scuffed and chipped. Chairs that are so worn down and bally they appear to have been donated to this office by some up-and-coming doctor twenty years ago. Behind the receptionists’ desk, four-drawer filing cabinets so overflowing they are stacked on top with excess folders. An overweight man and his two chunky children check out and discuss Medicaid co-pays for labs with the over-the-counter-hair-dyed receptionist who wears a faded set of Broncos scrubs in the middle of April.
I can’t fit this day, or the last two weeks, the last eight years, into a poem.
I could be in seventh grade social studies right now, telling students the important information they need to add to their Chinese time lines. I watch Isabella swing her legs back and forth, jump from chair to chair as frequently as the plump toddler who just walked in with her seven-year-old sister and not-more-than-twenty-two-year-old mom, and I think, Wow, I bet no one I work with would ever be caught dead in this office. And I think, I bet no one I work with has anything less than perfect children (I’ve heard all their stories of reading-by-four, good-citizenship awards, best-ever on the basketball team).
Fifteen minutes tick by. We pay our five dollar co-pay. I hand her a battered bill that looks like the mental hell I’ve put myself through over the past two weeks. When we are finally called into the office, the nurse assistant writes down in ten words all I can say at this time about my daughter. It is not enough. Nothing will ever be enough.
The PA comes in, tall and thin as a stalk of beans, questioning my motivation. “Anyone else in the family have this problem? This tends to run in the family–to be hereditary.” Of course it does. I think back to my fearful days in the classroom, my head on the desk, my nose in a book, my lips sealed for fear of punitive action from the adults surrounding me. I weakly mention that my husband got held back in second grade, that his parents never took him to a doctor.
Were they wrong, or am I?
She tells me about the forms I already knew she would give me. I get the process, I want to say. I’m a teacher. I deal with kids like this every day. But I don’t. She’s got a screaming two-month-old, a snot-faced toddler, and fifty other patients on her list. I know. I get it. I take the papers and nod, shuffle Isabella into the hall, into the car, back to school.
She asks, “If there’s something going on in my brain, are they going to take it out?” Rephrasing my explanation of why we came in here today. “No, Isabella, of course not. If they took out your brain, you would die. It controls your whole body. They might give you medicine that you have to take every day.”
“Oh, OK, I was wondering about that,” and she finishes her lunch, silent for once.
We step in her school, tiptoe to her class. She hovers in the hallway, hesitant as a kindergartner on the first day of school. But she’s in second grade, I think. She shouldn’t hesitate, she should be fine. And that’s when I realize that everything about her, every twisted way I see her in my eyes, cannot be explained from my perspective.
My perspective is that she’s been in trouble twice within five days of school. That she had a note on her report card first quarter about excessive talking. That we took away her favorite things for twelve days and she had no visceral reaction to punishment. That when she was two and a half and sitting in time out, she couldn’t sit still for two minutes. For thirty seconds. For ten. That when she was three, she couldn’t either. Or four, or five. That she has to be told ten times to do any task we ask her to do. That she won’t read a book, not because she’s incapable, but because she can’t stop moving long enough to focus. That I think she has ADHD. That I feel like a failure as a parent because my child won’t listen to me. That I have considered spanking her because nothing. Else. Works.
I clutch the forms in my hand, place them in the passenger’s seat. I could leave them there, a scapegoat that I don’t have to follow through on. Or, I could go down to the basement and unravel the trash bags full of every special item that I’ve taken that belongs to her, blaming her “illness” for her behavior. What will it be? The truth? Or the scapegoat?
I drive to my school, unable to answer.
cat’s paws on glass
dented side panel
dash lights that haven’t
worked in five years
bits of wrappings
from kids’ endless
candy expenditures
taped-on headlight
zip-tied bumper
broken visor
windshield crack
of spider-ice
locks and windows
you have to open
by hand
broken cup holders
too small for any drink
radio numbers
you can no longer see.
and you dare ask
how i could layer on
thick butt pad
sports-bra undershirt
two long underwear tops
one long underwear bottom
bike capris
two pairs of socks
two sets of gloves
a bandana, hat, scarf
a helmet and headphones
a saddle bag filled with
lunch and work clothes?
oh.
you missed
the silver sliver of moon
the last star of night
the windless morn
Aurora’s pink fingertips
painting the sky
the top of the hill home
where the curving road
presented its framed picture
of the city skyline
distantly mirrored
by snow-capped fourteeners.
i understand.
you would rather be warm.
i would rather have warmth.
we are girls becoming women
and women reliving girlhood.
all it takes
when times get rough
is a dodging-traffic drive
a sled down the mountain
endless screaming and dancing
a squished spider’s funeral
meals for twenty-eight
movies all night
and
the elixir of life
breathing wintry air on our skin,
popping out our souls
on the goosebumped flesh.
we are girls
girls
girls
becoming women.
