And if I had a bugle i would blow it

Many of you know that for a couple of months now my husband and I have had seven kids. Our two nieces and two nephews have been staying with us since just before St. Patrick’s Day.  It’s family business, but suffice it to say their mom, my sister-in-law, is homeless and unable to care for them at this point.  There is no one else who could care for them right now, so we took them in.  I grew up in a house where I was told repeatedly “If you get pregnant don’t expect any help from me,” so I sort of came out of that with an unwillingness to help others in these situations.  But that all changed when I had children and nieces and nephews started popping out all over the place. I fell in love with those kids, all eight of them, so when four of them needed a stable place to live, there wasn’t really a choice. Of course they were going to stay with us.

            We absolutely do not have the money to afford four more kids on top of our three, but at least we have room for them. For a whole month they were living in a seedy hotel with ten people, so just having room to play or sit quietly and do homework is pretty awesome for them. We have a full basement, and it’s partially finished. That’s where the kids stay, on a set of bunk beds and a queen-size bed. We could use a couple more dressers and some major organizational supplies (especially for their shoes! My god, the shoes!!!), but otherwise they fit here just fine.

            Where I’ve been so pleasantly surprised is by everyone in our community. When people find out we’ve taken in these kids, they have surprised us over and over with generosity. A woman from the church my kids attend gave us a queen-sized bed. My brother-in-law and his girlfriend brought us a car full of groceries. My mom made little Easter baskets for seven kids instead of three. I talked to their school counselor, and told her where we were really having trouble was feeding the kids, so she hooked us up with the “Lunch in a Backpack” thing. That helped, but we were still struggling to feed these kids, all ages 5 to 10, who seem to be hungry at every moment of their waking hours. So I applied for food stamps, and we were approved for $608 a month. That’s about $150 a week, and all of us are so grateful.

            One evening when the kids were playing outside, a woman who knows their grandpa stopped by and gave us a nearly full platter of Subway Sandwiches, which was perfect timing as they hadn’t had much for snacks all day and I didn’t have any idea what I would be able to put together for dinner.

            The school system also hooked my nieces and nephews up with clothes! They sent three bags of clothes, some old and some new, including shoes, underwear, and socks. My eldest niece got three really beautiful dresses, and they all felt so special with their new things.

            One day, a friend stopped by and gave us a couple of grocery bags of snack foods!

            We have just been amazed at how everyone we know has helped provide for these kids. It matters.  So, so much.

            I’ve taken to making a weekly menu now, and buying groceries once a week. I stock up on bananas, clementines, apples, and pears, and buy the ingredients for the dinners I’ve chosen. I keep ingredients to make our own cookies on hand. All of the kids, even mine, are starting to eat more vegetables and a wider variety of foods. We haven’t gone as healthy as I know we should, but we’re moving that way (the other day, they ALL ate salad!!  SALAD!!).  Our house is so full now! The hubby and I had just begun talking about having another baby when all this happened, but we absolutely cannot handle that now, and that’s OK. Being a presence in these kids’ lives is more important right now, for sure. 

            So even though none of the people who have helped us read this blog, we are grateful.  I will try my best to pay this forward.

 

P.S. Any study or blogger who says having three kids is as difficult as having 6, or 7, or 10, is HAHAHAHAHAHA WRONG. 

           

Which Way Will WIC go?

I loved being on WIC from 2000-2005. I loved the cooking classes, free recipe books and never having to worry about food for my son. My ex-husband and I were very poor college students back then so knowing there would be cereal, milk and other food for our son in constant supply was a blessing indeed.

For me, WIC was pretty consistent. You went in about once a month, had your child weighed, measured and sometime a finger prick to check iron levels (a child can be on WIC until the age of 5 or until your income increases over poverty mark for the family size). Then, you got your folder of checks. These checks were good for specific items and varied in selection with the child’s age.

Once in a while they had me sign up for a class. One was on how to make macaroni and cheese from scratch (white base, add cheese, boil macaroni, put in oven) and another on the number of fruits and vegetables your child was to eat per day and how to make eating them fun and interesting (ants on a log!). Most classes came with government-printed recipe books and handouts. I thought it was fun, and honestly, a bit like junior high home-ec class, which I also liked quite a bit.

But I was surprised to hear that many women have had different experiences with WIC than I have. Reports of “pushy staff” and mundane visits have been ringing in my ears. Some even quit. I think it would take a lot for me to quit a free food program but when you hear that a mother “didn’t feel respected as a parent” that is definitely hard to take. I think that would push me over the edge.

WIC tried to pressure me into breastfeeding but in no way with a heavy hand. In the office, I succumbed to pressure to join a class just to learn about it but then cancelled. I was 19 and pregnant. All my brothers and sisters had been bottle-fed and I wanted my husband to be able to help. I worried about breastfeeding not working out. I could go on and on but I don’t want to make this a breastfeeding post. Suffice it to say, I just wasn’t ready to breastfeed. I was young, scared and had no frame of reference. I gave a sigh of relief when I got my first formula checks without hassle.

So, upon reading that WIC is actually trying to recruit low income families to join, I started to wonder why this would be needed. Isn’t the Right always saying we “poor people” want our free cheese? Guess we don’t if they are all up in our parenting business.

I hope WIC is taking surveys to see why people leave or refuse to join. WIC doesn’t seem to be as well-known as it used to be. Has it overstayed its welcome? I don’t think so. Perhaps there is pressure from higher up Government folks for WIC to produce impressive numbers to report back to those who elected to support and fund the program. I’ve learned in my past few months of grant writing that grantors (government or not) REALLY want to see what you do with THEIR money. Perhaps that’s it…WIC is pressuring parents to churn out super babies so they can keep their funding.

What’s your WIC story? I’d love to hear it.

A Sex Note: Would You Want One?

The other night, on my pillow, I found a short tender letter written by my 17 year old daughter. In the letter, she got straight to the point and told me her and her boyfriend of nearly a year had had sex for the first time. She assured me they were responsible and safe. She said they hadn’t really planned for it to happen, but it just kinda’ happened. She said they were being responsible, and she just wanted me to know. I think they were both virgins (but it’s hard to be certain). I cried after I read the letter – first, because of her loss of innocence (She’s grown up too fast!), second, because she was choosing to keep me informed of her most intimate secrets (Holy smokes! I thought she semi-hated me most days!), and, third, because I worried I might be responsible for nudging along the process (!). Just the week before, I told her she needed to get out more and have some fun while she was young. She doesn’t go out much. She’s never in trouble. She plays the flute. Her grades are incredible. And I have been getting her birth control for the last three years – not because she’s been sexually active but because she has awful heavy periods (a curse that runs in the family).  I suggested them to make her less miserable. Did I give her a green light? Should I throw up a stop sign now?

During a phone call, I told my older sister about this endearing letter. Maybe I was bragging a little, fluffing up the idea that my daughter and I have a relationship which consists of some near-to freaky trust and honesty. Of course, for all I know I suppose my daughter could’ve had sex with her boyfriend months ago. When I was a horny teenybopper, either I told my mother absolutely nothing or I lied impulsively, sometimes even when I didn't need to. Given the note, however, I think it's safe to call the bottom line more important (i.e., The wonder of the fact that she told me anything at all.).

Maybe I wanted some big sisterly advice on what to do now. My sister is five years older than me, and seeing as we grew up with a working single mother, my sister did a lot to mother me herself. She’s survived one hardass life; she’s in a better place now than she’s ever been – finally divorced from an dumbass and affording her rent. But she still works 40+ hours a week as a temp when she deserves the rank of an admin. She’s a good mother of four, including two exhaustively moody teenage daughters, and has recently become a grandmother.

I told my sister, “My daughter told me her and her boyfriend had sex.”

My sister responded, “And she felt compelled to dump that information on you?”

I laughed off her response. She wasn’t meaning to be funny, in fact, she was feeling kinda' end-of-the-day sleepy/grouchy. Still, her response made me think. We parents of teenagers are ever-haunted by these concupiscent heebie jeebies. It's hard to watch our big-eyed babies become creatures of curves and angles driven by lust. I was a teenage mother, so I fear I may have overcorrected. I bring up the myths and truths of sex, the responsibilities of birthing people, maintaining self-confidence and control amidst gender stereotypes, etc., at least once a week or more, and I've been doing this since my daughter first budded boobies (age 9?). I've always believed the sex talk sure as hell doesn’t end with the Birds and Bees speech or with the official display of whatever illustrated version of the “Tell Me About My Body” book otherwise hiding on the shelf.

So I ask fellow parents, would you want a little informative letter on your pillow? Would you pry for it? Would you hide from it? How much could you bare to know and what would you do with that information if you got it dumped on you?

Molly's Mom's Toaster

When my sixteen year old daughter told me she had invited Molly’s mom into our apartment while I was napping, my stomach clinched so tight I nearly puked. Molly was my daughter’s new best friend in high school marching band. My family and I (me and my hubby, our four kids, and our dog) had just moved to the area so I could finish up grad school, and I was looking upon our tiny, two bedroom single level apartment as temporary. I did not plan on ever entertaining company – at least not without an extensive explanation. Making buddies with a fellow parent wasn’t really a workable plan – unless the parents were more than a little free-spirited, nontraditionally young (I had my first three kids all before I was 21), and struggling (I mean food stamp approval level struggles) for time and money. THEN maybe I could relate a little.

Molly’s mom seemed to me, an alien, over a decade older, a city woman, a future helicopter parent, two car garage and tiny yappy dog owner, a God Complex attender, likely conservative. Molly’s mother seemed more organized, more involved and connected, more flexibly employed, more traditionally married, more housewifey, and so fit to the given plastic-mold in her concern for her daughter’s education. She had a two story on the outskirts of town, where all the houses were brick and the townspeople cruised to the grocery store in golf carts. Her and her kids were always dressed in name-brand clothing. She had afforded BOTH kids clear braces. She wore decorative sweatshirts appropriate to season. She worked part time in some office. Her husband kept the money flowing but was rarely home because he was always “off on business.” They had four dogs and a fat black cat that would all peer down their noses at me from her bay window whenever I pulled into her driveway to drop off or pick up my daughter.

I was overwhelmed by things like squeezing our money through a sieve, pulling together a work schedule, attending late night classes, and getting my writing done. I didn’t clean house much, and my husband kept up with it well enough. I sort of felt cozy in the muck and muddle. I was good enough if I was giving my children – the youngest 6 and the oldest 20 – a warm meal and some sort of minutely positive attention daily. I had to hope that the public school system was doing well enough and, occasionally, I tried to reverse any disreputable damages. I imagined myself stepping up later. I thought the older I became, the better I’d fit in with those “traditional” type parents like Molly’s mother, but I was beginning to realize I wasn’t catching up with anyone.

I had nearly puked because I realize Molly’s mom had seen my apartment in an outright wreck. She saw the piles of shoes and coats which beaver damned the flow of traffic from the front door. She saw my gritty carpet after my kindergartener had been chopping up one hundred tiny paper triangles to prove her newfound counting skills. Molly’s mom saw our family dog, sick and coughing and weepy eyed, in need of a vet’s attention, if only we could have afforded it. She saw a twin bed as it sat unmade on the floor without a frame in the space traditionally reserved for a dining table. There had been toys and papers everywhere. She saw stacks of half-filled cups on the end table and ashtrays filled with cigarette butts and discarded chewing gum. She saw my sink full of dirty dishes, the leftovers of supper, and, of course, it had been spaghetti. The worst was she saw my husband napping half-naked on the couch in his Darth Vader-esque sleep apnea mask. Surely, she bore witness to his hairy belly button.

My daughter had tried to wake me so us two mothers could meet, and I, being exhausted from staying up über late the night before, brushed it off in a sleepy mumble. I told her – perhaps half aware of what I was avoiding – I didn’t want to talk to anyone. Later, when I learned of Molly’s mom’s invasion, I beheld visions of the woman running a manicured finger over the top of my television to calculate the depth of the dust. I envisioned her kicking coats and shoes aside, fighting the urge to organize them herself or perhaps thinking she should graciously loan me one of her organizational cubbyhole systems (like a good fellow mother would). I saw her sniffing the air and lifting her chin in an attempt to raise her head out of the scent of dirty dog and cigarette smoke. I saw her gazing caringly at my sixteen year old daughter, wishing the Lord had given her a more suitable set of parents.

After learning of my exposure, I snapped. I assured my family they were a group of totally careless people, not concerning themselves with the appearance of the apartment in the face of new company, and the worst kind of company – a “traditional,” older, conservative mother. I started tossing shoes into the shoe basket, started rinsing dishes and shoving them in the dishwasher. It is a given, I insisted, that when anyone – not just another woman – looks upon the interior of a living space and it’s messy, it’s immediately blamed upon the mental state and ability of the woman. Among mothers, there can be a brutal competiveness, a tendency to sneer, judge, and share gossip. Mothers can seek to show up one another. Society sets this up the regulative order of things. When I was very young, I witnessed my own poor, single mother as she was practically tortured by fellow female church goers. Having had my first three kids before I was 21, I have had nightmares about such castings and have always felt like I had a wider tail to cover.

After my mini-explosion upon being exposed as incompetent, my husband stared at me like I was crazy. He raised his eyebrows and stepped away from me as though I was contagious. But all this falls on me! I cried. Can’t you see? Molly’s mom thinks I’m awful. His stare sunk deep. What had I just said? I was thinking crazy. I stopped and laughed at myself and convinced myself to brush it all off. Why should I care what Molly’s mom thinks of me? She’s so freakin’ plastic.

Not long after all this, Molly’s mom let me in her ranch to make a quick phone call. As I walked up to her house, I realized I had never noticed her grass was dry and tan unlock the other lush green lawns on the block, nor had I noticed that there sat a rusting Bronco in the driveway that never moved. “Just kick the dogs away,” Molly’s mom had told me. The dogs had yapped and jumped and sniffed over all of my lower half. There sat a tiny pink bow on the head of the Pomeranian, and when I saw this I thought I had been spot on in my assumptions. But then I noticed the fur on its belly and the underside of its tail was so grungy it was twisted into dredlocks. As her big black cat nuzzled my calves, I saw it had bald spots. Something was off. After Molly’s mom pointed me to the phone, she ran to the bathroom to ponytail her flaming red hair which suddenly seemed insanely frizzy and unruly.

Molly’s mom’s house was disgusting. I stepped over pets and pillows and dirty clothes in the living room to get to the phone in the kitchen. With all of those pets and that overfilled trashcan, her house was so odorous it was tangy. Stringy dust bunnies waved from her heating vents. Her front bay window was cloudy and had a line of slimy dog saliva. Her sofa was ripped open in places, exposing chunks of yellowed foam. Her carpet was stained – pee? tea? Her houseplants were all brown and slumping, neglected. Her family portraits were all goofy, off-center, and hanged crooked. She had a large kitchen table, but I couldn’t see the top of it for the stacks of junk mail, magazines, and cookie packages. She had a plastic basket on her kitchen counter overflowing with little orange bottles of prescription pills. Then I saw her toaster which sat there by the phone. It was covered with caked-on crumbs and burnt crud. It was a repeated tool of the easy breakfast, littered with PopTart pieces, a symbol of neglect, overuse, and exhaustion.

TheToaster - FA+, by Ingrid Falk & Gustavo Aguerre. 

Buenos Aires, 2000 - installation

2500 slices of bread on foamboard. 500 x 450 cm.

I would come to learn that when Molly’s mom’s husband was “off on business” he was trekking across the country as an OTR truck driver – and she hated his guts. He never helped her with anything, being stout to follow the “proper” rules of gender expectation. They were in massive debt, she was suffering from multiple health problems all multiplied by depression, and she ran herself ragged every day. The only relief she ever found was in the occasional bottle of wine, and, on that day, she hinted to me I should have some with her some time. I told her maybe, but doubted myself, knowing she was indeed a conservative Christian and, when I drink wine, I can get testy. I did hug her after making the phone call that day, but I was unsure of whether I liked her better or worse having discovered she wasn’t so Disney. I had left her driveway sporting a half-smile, and even as irony waited to punch me in the face, I patted myself on the back knowing I would never let my toaster get that nasty.

Of Mice and Failure.

As much as I like to pretend that I have it all together, truth is I am always hanging on by a thread. Ani Difranco said it best, “As bad as I am, I’m proud of the fact that I’m worse than I seem.”

I have been officially divorced for a short time. The whole process has been like pulling a deeply rooted plant out of the pit of my lungs. I’ve had to find strength down in me to remove myself from a dysfunctional marriage and now I am trying to have the courage to write about it through nonfiction which, let me tell you is a task for me, a poet.

I feel like I have been hiding behind my poems during this whole process. Not to knock poems at all. I love them. They provide an outlet where I can tell as much or as little as I want to about my life. I know my pain and confusion has come out in my poems but for me, to just say Hey, this is REALLY hard for me has seemed impossible to do. And frankly, a bit weak.

I feel that a stigma can surround someone who is divorced. People who might want to date me, acquaintances, the barista or even friends could wonder What did SHE do wrong? I believe there to be a self-imposed stamp on my forehead that says I’ve failed.

Now, I know I didn’t fail at marriage alone. It takes two to tango and all that but there are times when things get hard with regular life and that is when I miss having a partner in life, such as, I have mice in my apartment. I have lived here for a year and a half and the mice show up this month. My lease is up and I am just grossed out. I’ve tried to trap them but nothing. I have no bodies as evidence. And with no evidence of dead mice and continued “surprises,” I feel I can’t go on living here. It seems silly to move but having mice droppings in my drawers makes me feel like a failure of a mother. I have failed to provide my son with a safe and healthy home.

It also makes me wish I had a person that I could still bounce fears and situations like this off of. You can’t do that with a guy you casually date because 1) you don’t want him to know you live somewhere with mice and 2) leaning on someone in that sort of domestic crisis could scream “I want to be serious.” Which may or may not be the case, but shit, it’s a game out there and I’m not up for playing. It's 'take me or leave me' time.

Heavy boxes depress me. The idea of moving to a new apartment makes me cringe. I have to figure out if I can handle it all cause frankly, the divorce and the ex-boyfriend “Section V” have shot my nerves all to hell.

So, I guess what I am saying is: I want to be able to look fear in the eye. But I have: every day for the past 2 years. I’m tired. And saying this in prose makes it seems more real.

In the poem version of this blog, there are mice machinists, torturing the feet of women and we then turn to the sad longing gaze of a hungry cat. Autumn leaves cover the ‘lost hope,’ disguised here as a fallen pet rat, run over by a bicycle. He blinks at the clouds as his life gives way. Somewhere, a clock strikes eleven.

What Mary Oliver was lucky enough to have learned in her early years:

"First . . . one can rise early in the morning and have time to write (or, even, to take a walk and then write) before the world's work schedule begins. And . . . one can live simply and honorably on just about enough money to keep a chicken alive. And do so cheerfully." (from A Poetry Handbook by Mary Oliver, p. 120)

As a mother, running a household, I interject.

· Early to rise means early to bed. Early to bed means leaving much unfinished.

· Insomnia, anxiety, whatever things one might take pills for in the evenings, lets one drift through alarm clock warnings.Waking up late pisses on one’s chances for “cheerful.”

· Rising early for alone time requires silence that’s near-to-impossible to pull off in an apartment or an old creaky house. If one has a dog, the dog will always wake no matter how quiet one is; it will whimper to be let out to pee as one makes coffee.

· More often “early to rise” only means the other work starts sooner. To-do lists find one easily, first thing (as one has often planned it) and so kills one’s inspiration. Even without the penned to-do lists, the washer and dryer – which have sat quietly all night – seem now to whisper nasty things about wrinkles and mildew.

· Some kids – even teenagers – are naturally early risers, and they steal one’s writing devices to check their Facebook and play music videos. And toddlers have a lot to do in the mornings that requires one’s undivided attention (like sitting on the potty).

· To walk before the sun's up would mean one would need to carry a flashlight and an effective protective device and a cell phone because the world has mostly succeeded at convincing one that the world is dangerous and one is truly vulnerable.

· Work commutes mean out the door very early. Drives steal one’s otherwise personal time. It’s hard to take notes while driving, and kids lose things like hand-held recording devices.

· Sometimes, one has to live on just enough money to keep several chickens alive. All these chickens must be clothed and feed and taught to live within the fence line.

· "Enough to feed a chicken" means qualifying for free lunches and welfare and accepting handouts when they're given. Teenagers wear the stigmas that come along with such things burned into their foreheads.

· And the Writing Pen is often unruly and asks more and more of a mother as a writer and, meanwhile, back in reality, things pile up when one has been elsewhere, lost in words and stories and visions. All of those piled up things have a way of reshuffling one’s direction, over and over again. Alas, one's morning walk is a complication.

· The barnyard is demanding. This one doesn’t like playing rooster. And writing can makes one feel more like a dirty fox with dark intentions - a time stealer.



Mary, not this one on this day or any near day in the future.

For now, all I have are my damn sweet, late evenings.

What a louse-y day that was

Last Wednesday morning I sat up in my office, transcribing as usual. I like to get an early start since I've been working extra hours, so I usually get up at 5:30 or 6 to start working. My kids come up to say good morning to me and then they are up and down until it's time to head for the bus, for my older 2 at least. That day, my 7 year-old daughter, let's call her Zoe, because she saw in her baby book that that was a choice we thought about and she now wishes it was her name,came up to have me fix her hair in pig tails. Zoe's hair is coffee brown, rich and thick and a little longer than chin-length. Ever since she got it cut so short, it's shiny and absolutely gorgeous.

So she turned around and I began to part her hair to do her pigtails, and that's when I saw them. Eggs. They had to be eggs. Tiny white pouches attached to her hair, not at the root but along the shaft. There weren't a ton, but enough for me to know it wasn't right and wasn't just flaky scalp. i have an itchy head for whatever reason, especially if I don't wash my hair every day, so when she'd said the week before that her head itched, I dutifully checked it and yep, her scalp right on top was a little flaky, but nothing unusual. But this time I just knew. I told her to go downstairs and have her daddy check it out. My partner didn't think it was lice--he'd had it when he was younger, and he remembers, distinctly, sitting on the floor in his living room with his head on his mom's lap on top of a paper towel, while she used a nit comb to pick the lice and eggs out. It hurt like hell. his mom would show him the lice and then crush them with her fingernail, and it made a popping sound. So he tried to get the eggs out and pop them, and when they didn't pop, he assumed it wasn't lice.



So I showed my partner and told him I had looked up pictures, which I had, and those were definitely eggs. We called her in sick to school and my partner went and got some special shampoo. Yes, I put pesticides in my daughter's hair. And I thought about not doing that. My partner's parents didn't have money for the shampoo, so there was a lot of nit-picking and sore scalps.

Now, my partner goes to work at 12:30 nearly every day. I'd asked him to shampoo her and then when he left I could comb it out. Mysteriously, he ran out of time to shampoo her, so when he left I put her in the bath and put the shampoo on. it has to go on dry hair and sit for 10 minutes but no longer. As soon as I got it all in there, she said her head itched, so I found a toy and began to scratch her head with it so as not to touch the shampoo I'd just put on her poor little head. So, we shampooed and then I had her sit on the bathroom floor while I combed with the nit comb. And at first, I wasn't going to use the gel that came with it, because you had to wash that out too. But then, I saw a louse. I wiped the contents of the comb on my towel, and I said to Zoe, "Oh. there's one right there. Weird, huh?" I was not freaked out, as I thought I would be. I HATE bugs. Spiders are the worst, but all insects make me jump. A fly landed on my desk once in high school and I screamed. But I certainly didn't want Zoe to feel badly about the stupid lice, or to freak her out. So I kept combing and wiping. I couldn't really tell what I was getting, on account of the gel was all foamy. And then...


"Mom, that one's moving," Zoe said. I whipped my head, and yep, that little fucker was moving. I pressed on the louse with the comb thingie, and it didn't die. I kept crushing it. Soon, more were joining it, moving slowly in the goopy gel mess on my lap. And I even saw a couple on her FACE and her NECK. GAHHHHH! And you guys, her hair is so effing thick that it took about an hour and a half just to comb it out. And then we rinsed it again, and that was it. I had to get back to work--I'd already been delayed for several hours, and I knew I'd be working until bedtime. But first, I had to wash all of the kids' bedding and seal up their stuffed animals in plastic garbage bags. My three kids all sleep in 1 bed, for some reason, even though they have a bunk bed, and I was very nervous the other kids would get it. My youngest girl, at three, has hair down to her butt when it's wet. She has this fine hair, thick but fine and very tangly, and curly. Ringlets.

I think I got lucky. Next time we checked Zoe, she was clear. She still is, and the other kids haven't gotten it. I mentioned my itchy head earlier, right? Well, now every time I scratch I'm paranoid. But my partner says I'm clear. This appears to have been a comparatively mild case of head lice, and I'm soooo grateful for that. Because I simply do not have time for lice right now. I'm spoken for every minute of the day, and those damn lice have taken enough of my time. Good riddance, you little assholes.