BJORN BORG HAS A PIMPLE ON HIS TEMPLE

When people ask me what I do, I say I’m a writer. I don’t say I’m an author because that would mean there was actually enough money to deposit into my account. According to my mother, I have been holding forth before I could speak real words. Preaching it, sister.

I was afraid to write a blog. The worldwide web is big and terrifying. I didn’t do it for fame and fortune. I didn’t have a target audience. No agenda. After a little contemplation, I decided to start a blog for my own need – a place to put my stories. My very own island of creativity.

Somewhere, in all of this plenty, is a journal from young motherhood. I had written the word RANDOMONIUM to describe a typical day. And it wasn’t out of kindness. It was underlined. A good name to cover everything I wanted to write about - stories, opinions, recipes, pictures, poetry.

Of course, I have never turned down the opportunity to swirl in the middle of a room for an admiring audience. But I began writing very simple do-dads in grade school.[1] At some point, I began thinking of items as genders with stories - the dice in a Yahtzee game, marbles in Chinese Checkers and even the keys on the piano. It was so common to me, I never mentioned it. I was a mother when I found out not everyone sees the world in numbers and genders.

Being a writer can be very distracting. Having a blog should be easy. Yes and no. The inspiration is usually easy. The discipline is not. Especially for some of us. Standing all day at a desk, waiting on a word or two to type or covering the walls with notes or scribbling ideas onto the wall. I am not that brilliant. Brilliant is as brilliant does.

I do remember standing on a slight rise of black soil, trees and grass freshly turned over in preparation for new homes, farmland which had been sold to the highest bidder, just one more piece of Texas soon to be seeded for double named real estate developers selling seven floor plans, three styles of bathroom tile and five types of front windows. Watching the sun set, looking out at a city reflected all around us. I was holding my little cousin’s hand.  This was my first instant inspiration. I 

have never forgotten it.

I came home and wrote furiously in my three ring binder. I wrote in class without getting caught. Scribbles, really. My friends wanted to read my stories but I was protective.  The binder is in a box under the bed, somewhere. I have theories on the different locations of my precious handwritten anything. I thought I would be famous but the museum never called. I don’t envy my daughter after I go to glory.

When I was thirteen, I began writing poetry. Almost daily until my sophomore year of college. Of course, it was a lot of fluff. Every now and then, I would see a spark. Nothing dark and foreboding or mystically symbolic. Just as you see it, to be read and enjoyed by people who usually fear poetry because it is mystically symbolic. I have always loved to read and write poetry.

I went to three schools in four years, and graduated, and only changed my major for one semester. Teaching. The professor was so boring; I couldn’t take two more miserable years.[2] Now I know I would have loved teaching English.[3] We are not very smart when we are twenty-two.

No one officially asked me what I was going to do with my life or offered any direction. It was a different day and your life did not have to be figured out before ninth grade second period class for the next thirty years. We barely knew what a computer was but the really smart cookies were getting those first degrees in computer science (sexy). The only home computers were built by geniuses on their dining room tables. So a little English major (not sexy) could just find her own way. I held on to my English Major and dared anyone to make me change. “I want to be a writer.”

And then life just happened, unexpected and unwanted. But where you are is where you are. Poetry and journaling kept me writing. I also wrote a children’s story, occasionally submitting it to small publications.  

Before all of this, there WAS a defining moment for the writer in me. My Daddy said, “You can always be on the newspaper!” the crushing after-second I found out I did not make the drill team at my new school.[4] I probably fell out on the floor. My life was over. Never mind that I had practiced for two weeks and then try-outs. With an undiagnosed case of raging mono. We won’t investigate that back story.

The newspaper changed my life. I found my spot. I was a staff writer. My senior year I was the editor for my high school newspaper. Late nights, a lightbox and diet Dr. Pepper. Typewritten articles. Everything done by hand – layouts, counting headlines, measuring columns. Assignments. Interviewing. Checking proofs.  

I know Bjorn Borg had a pimple on his temple because I saw it when I was sitting right next to him in a press conference. He was the second ranked tennis player in the world and had won Wimbledon the year before.

I was very nervous in my first press conference, a room full of sports reporters and one other woman. My trusty cassette tape recorder was shaking in my lap. His fur coat was draped across a Razorback director’s chair. I was sixteen, he was twenty with brilliant blonde hair and blue eyes and his Swedish flair.[5] With a pimple. We are all human.

I asked him a question about his recent loss to Jimmy Connors. He answered in a manner I still am unable to publish. But I had my picture made with him, anyway.    

After five years, I just write. Inspiration. Hard work. (Sometimes days.) Stream of consciousness. In the car, pen and paper, writing about the winter landscape, driving up the road to Christmas. It can be an obsession. The more you write, the more you want to write. Somehow squeezing life – a new grandson, dirty laundry, knitting and Mah Jongg (brain teasers), car insurance, eggs milk butter bacon into all the folds of this accordion life.

Numbers aren’t everything. So I say. But it is amazing to me that readers all over the world have hit the button, five digits worth, to see about Randomonium, making up a true United Nations, our stories swirling around the world. 

Thank you for five years of reading. I am just a storyteller with the opportunity to put words on paper. 

Years ago, at a small, casual event, I met a popular newspaper columnist. For years, I was a faithful reader of her stories in the state newspaper. Naturally, I was excited to meet her. After introducing myself, I told her how much I enjoyed her stories. There were no other people standing with us. She said, “Thank you for your readership.” That was it. She slipped out of the conversation like the saucy barbecue ribs she was making a b-line for. The Queen had spoken.

Thank you for your time. Thank you for the occasional person who mentions a post. I have a friend who still chuckles when he asks me about a bride wearing red tennis shoes. Thank you for your 

comments. Thank you for letting me.

We are not going to meet at the barbeque. You’ll be my invited guest. I’ll be throwing it down for your encouragement and support for these five years. And more to come!

In my office August 10, 2018

---

[1] Fred the Tom Cat – The First , Randomonium 4-22-18

[2] My sister and sister-in-law are both loving, giving teachers on the frontlines of teaching.

[3] I would only qualify for teaching literature because my blogging style has devastated my grammar and punctuation skills.

[4] I had been on a drill team in another state the year before, meeting the qualifications of kicking way above my head and doing a cartwheel split, important talents for young Southern ladies wishing to twirl in the middle of a football field or a  basketball gymnasium. Also impressive party tricks for the rest of your life until you have ankle surgery.

[5] Borg may have obtained a Computer Science Degree between matches.

THEY ONLY FOUND HER HEAD - WHAT A STORYTELLER HEARS Part 1

They didn't touch his brain. A sentence to get your attention, Overheard during a layover at Hartsfield Atlanta Airport. A family of three were having this serious conversation, oblivious to my presence. I had a small notebook out for the long layover. I usually carry one because I don't like to sit without doing something. Most writers will admit to being careful eavesdroppers.

The story proves people will say anything in a crowd - a party, a movie theater, waiting rooms. We don't think anyone else is listening except the person standing next to us.  Mind you, these are not stories we would get up and share in a hushed dinner hall. These are things that could hush a room in full throttle.

Are our spoken words safer in a crowd? Does a public space give us courage to say things we only think in private?

One afternoon I was waiting in my doctor's office with my Sudoku puzzle book. I usually carry one in my bag. Besides being addicted to nine squares, it makes me invisible.

Two ladies were sitting nearby, maybe a grandmother and her daughter. I already knew the grandmother had seventeen children. Reeling from that kicker, in this quiet waiting room, the grandmother offers out of the blue, "They only found her head." She had good timing because I almost fell out until she said "the cat."  Of course, that was not a pleasant thought. You never know what people will say.

My hair salon is rich with details. A friend says every good stylist knows where the bodies are buried.
In one afternoon, I was privy to these two partial discussions. I was getting my hair shampooed, one of my favorite luxuries.

And let us not forget the complete, nothing private, barn door open cell phone. This was the one sided conversation. Verbatim. Because I always get to my book and write these things down.

"You need to eat humble pie. This is not going to fly. He is mentally unstable. I told her "Girl, that's not a diaper, it's your panties." Strange. Minds flipping back and forth.

As I was getting my cut and color, drama in the next chair. I had to listen. I pulled my puzzle book out later when my color was working. 

"Are you in love? Ever been to Europe? Getting dry - so long. All my friends lied to me... I said that but he said no... Last year it was Mexico."  After a lengthy discussion of her lovelife and travel, her overprocessed hair and her lying friends, she actually started talking about greenbeans, okra and tomatoes. Non-stop even through the blow-dry.

This is what people are talking about. Outloud to the whole world.

Everyone carries a story. But not everyone tells their story in the waiting room or airport. I think if you asked most people, they would say nothing has ever happened to them, at first. But then they might remember. Long ago ancestors walking the Trail of Tears. Watching a favorite aunt fry up a baloney sandwich. Lying on blankets,under a country dark night with cousins, listening to "Close To You" over and over and over. Flying a plane at eighty years of age. Milking a cow during a marriage proposal. Painting a red room two and  a half times. Jumping in puddles one afternoon. Riding in a private jet with Coach Bear Bryant. Most are not earth shattering but the back stories could be phenomenal. Inspiration is out there.

I have been a storyteller all of my life. A wise mother once told me to write what I know. When I was probably twelve, I taught myself to type on my Pa's typewriter. A new sheet of paper, slipped into the typewriter, was a thrilling possibility. Almost the first place I headed when we got to my grandparents' house. Uninterrupted time to sit at the typewriter desk. Space for my imagination to grow. Encouragement for my toddling gift.

 My love of storywriting pushed me out into the unknown world of blogging. Five years later I'm still here.


Part Two to follow.

NO CUCKOO IN THIS NEST

I am just an ordinary person. With a big mouth and a love of writing. And total willingness to throw stigma to the wind. Stigma for a mental illness that can be caused by a biological difference to the brain and genetics, according to the Mayo Clinic. Physical. I had absolutely no control in procurring my lovely disease.

May is the month for Mental Health Awareness. I have lived with Bipolar Disorder Disease since college.


I strongly believe medical compliance and therapy are the two most important requirements for living a successful life with mental illness. A life of recovery. Good doctors and therapists, along with my faith and the support of my family are crucial. Being the best me I can be. I truly believe I would not be here without this combination.  

***

I pulled my suitcase out of the closet. Earlier in the day, when I gave up my full bottle of tranquilizers, my psychiatrist said I needed to go to the hospital. Months earlier, I found the extra bottle while I was unpacking. I had held the bottle in my hand but it gave me a weird, creepy feeling like walking past a gun counter. I knew he was right. I had to trust him. I had not been hospitalized because of my mental illness in twenty-seven years. For all of those years, I had managed to stay upright with the help of family.

I always thought I would feel like a failure if I had to return. Despite the ups and downs, those years in between were full of joy raising a beautiful daughter. Decorating homes, hosting parties.  Cooking chicken and dumplings for those in need.  Raising pups. Starting a blog. Writing poetry. Volunteering. Cross-stitching beautiful linen samplers. A third set of ears when the going got tough. Traveling. Learning to knit and to play Mah Jongg. Hitting the keys again. Teaching a Sunday School class of older ladies. Painting my office. All the while, using medication and therapy to help me be the best me possible, living in recovery. 

This was not packing for a holiday. I am known for my precise, neat packing which is exactly how I packed my suitcase. Three pairs of jeans, folded once to fit inside. A couple of tee shirts, a designer navy, white polka dotted, cotton shirt with three-quarter length sleeves, a green knit tee style gown, a Muumuu, socks, underwear. I packed my toothbrush, styling brush. No liquid. No makeup. No blow dryer. I slipped a picture of my daughter in my bag.   

How did I get here? Blame it on the Christmas money burning a hole in my pocket in April. My big box store was out of stock. I drove thirty miles to another store. I was feeling good, maybe too good. But I was in control. 

I walked over to check out my new CD/stereo system. A large screen television caught my attention. “If you give a Moose a muffin….”  I could use a new television for the bedroom.

A young man and woman took me through the department. Accessories were piling up. One is good and more is better. She detailed my new purchases. Between confessing my illiterate electronic skills and entertaining this new group of friends, I was definitely getting a buzz. A little mania is never a good thing, only addictive.

I do remember offering to buy them supper and inviting them to my house for homemade chili. I didn’t blink spending hundreds of dollars. But later that night I started to worry. They had my phone number and my address. And why did she give me her personal cell number? And they knew I could drop a bundle without flinching. What if they came to my house and tried to scam me or worse, kidnap me? It could happen. 

*

My first depression occurred in high school. By my junior year of college, I knew something was wrong. Some mornings I would wake up glued to my bed. Days of hopelessness, worry over classes. A day later I would feel happy, successful and positive. I was the one in the lampshade. Three schools in four years but I graduated. Ten years and no clue. Rollercoaster.     

I married my husband just after graduation. I had never lived in an apartment, paid bills, cooked regularly. I was trusting and naïve. Two months later, I took a job in a doctor’s office. The patients loved him. I came to hate him. He was verbally abusive, emotionally manipulative and sexually harassing.  No one talked about these things. I had just been married six months.  In front of the whole office, he said “your husband isn’t man enough for you and someday you will find someone who is.”     

After leaving the job, stress threw me into a depression which I medicated with food, gaining forty pounds in three months. This was just the start of decades of yo-yo dieting and tensions over my weight. The first two years of marriage were extremely difficult, setting up a pattern.

*

No kidnapping during the night. Now I was sitting in my own apartment. My world was teetering on extinction. Piercing quiet days spent sleeping on the sofa, jerking like a baby. Taking calls from friends and family, forcing my lying words into chit chat. No appetite for the instant potatoes, saltines, yogurt, protein shakes, Coca-Cola. Nothing stayed in my system.

Then the afternoon I fell. What I call flat on the floor with Jesus. But on this afternoon, I lost all hope. Jesus couldn’t help me now. But He was hovering. I was face down in the rug. No neighbors came running but I don’t know how they did not hear my guttural anguish at my world destroyed. I couldn’t move. Breathing dust in and out, smelling like butterscotch sweet and salty, lives walked, shoes and crumbs. I don’t know how long I stayed down. Finally, I sat up. My face was scratched and my eyes were swollen shut.   

I called Mama. She has always been there. Calm. I could hardly put words together. I told my mother I didn’t want to live. All those years ago, when I had been born two months premature and laid in an isolette for a month, she drove to the hospital every day and sat in a chair, watching nurses take care of me. She couldn’t even hold me. On this afternoon she told me I did want to live. I had to promise her I wouldn’t do anything. Everything would be alright.

I promised to call my therapist. I saw Sheila weekly. When I called her on this horrible afternoon, she didn’t miss a beat. We had spent four years together and she knew what was happening in my life. Minute by minute, over the years she had gained my respect and minute by minute, I had given her the authority for our present hour. She talked. I would talk. Was I going to be okay for the night? Yes. We had a plan. I told her I had promised my mother. I got into bed and went to sleep.

One of the values of consistent therapy is the professional relationship between the therapist and the client, the trained versus the bewildered. A therapist is non-judgmental. One therapist told me to say anything I want, spit words on the floor and then he would sweep them out the door. 

Living with a mental illness is a hard way to do life. This is not a river cruise on a beautiful summer evening. Life is checking what’s going on in the engine room, inhaling diesel fumes. Or going back up top and watching for snakes hanging from low limbed trees. Alligators pushing off from shore, diving below, waiting for you to fall off the boat. Everyone else is sitting thin and pretty, chatting with friends. Their lives are full and happy, with energy to run an efficient home, mother two or three babies, have a full or part-time job and read books, play bunko and tennis. How many times I pushed through the pain of depression to attend an occasion, hoping I was smiling enough, wanting to appear just like everyone else. 

Despite years of successful living, even armed with valuable information, I was now going back into the hospital for the second time. Willingly committing myself for medical help, hoping I could push a reset button and gain back my health. 

One of my best friends was beside me. The moon was full and so was the hospital. They took my suitcase as I entered the admissions area. “ What brings you here?” By this time, I was covering my arms and face with wet paper towels. Mental illness is a physical illness. While I felt relatively composed, my anxiety was giving me a headache, making me nauseous and light-headed. My meal of crackers and lemonade the night before and my one meal of this day, a Starbucks tall latte with one sugar, were not helping. I was told a dinner tray would be brought once I had a room.

I was frightened but every nurse and employee met me with kind eyes and reassuring words. Hours of data entry, vitals and bloodwork. “What brings you here?” When I stepped into the small, sterile medical room, I looked down and saw a penny, for me a little piece of comfort when I needed it. Two blue gloved nurses checked me out from top to bottom. Anticipating the unknown is usually worse than the reality. I actually felt safer afterwards. 

Hours later, I fell asleep in a rolling cot between two other women. My shoestrings were removed, along with the underwire from my bra. I was given a paper sack with my possessions minus my soap, brush and cell phone. My dinner ended up being Goldfish snacks from the nurses’ station. Even with an extra blanket, I was miserably cold.

I called this medical excursion Spring Break. The required daily activities were group therapy, my psychiatrist visit, meds handout, mealtime, dayroom activity and bedtime with fifteen minute bed checks. One day, a nice, young woman with an extremely short term memory asked me if we were children. “What brings us here?”

I was moved to another room. My roommate, who was there on court order, said I was her nicest roommate of all. The bathroom door was a short-type curtain. There was no privacy with the consistent observations by people and cameras. In this setting, most people didn’t give their last name or talk much about family and home. Very little about what brought us there. We didn’t psychoanalyze each other. Days were spent in the day room coloring pictures, napping in chairs, drinking insidious coffee while the television blared MTV and the majority taking outside smoke breaks. My phone calls were not restricted. I never felt threatened or unsafe. 

My main complaint was the cold. I wasn’t cold-natured. My second night, I was fed up. I woke up and walked down the hall to the water fountain near the nurses’ station. “Can we help you, Amy?” “Just water.” In addition to my nightshirt, I was now wearing three cotton tees and a Muumuu along with two pairs of jeans, sock and shoes, socks on my hands and my designer cotton blouse wrapped about my head. Other than that, I was perfectly normal. And I wasn’t cold.

When Spring Break ended, I took my paper bag to the desk to verify my original possessions. I was escorted through a set of double locked doors into a foyer to wait for my things. I was amazed at how much better I felt. I was ready to go forward. My mother was there to pick me up. I felt like a six year old again, so excited to see her standing there, waiting for me. A nurse came through the doors. I took my suitcase in hand and headed out into spring.

 From Hi Low Happy Sad @2017 Amy Holt Taylor

THE DEFINITION OF A GOOD MAMA

She got the cat a few years later. For her, it has been a wonderful addition to her life. There are others of us who are not crazy about the antics of this cat. She knocks pictures off the wall. She pushed a Waterford lamp off the table, into pieces. Shredded upholstery fabric with her sharp back claws. Yesterday, she tossed a little sign given as a gift, from the counter. A Mother's Day gift from the first born to the mother. Crazy cat lady. It was metal so it didn't shatter. But her fierce love of this nutto cat is one more example of my mother's tremendous love and devotion if a breathing body belongs in her circle of family. And this cat is quite elevated in her position. She gets away with mayhem because she has the ability to purr.

I published this post on November 3, 2013. It still describes my Mama.


The birthday girl with no party.  But don't feel sorry for her.  That is exactly the way she wants her day to be, turning eighty.  She its practically running to another state just in case someone she knows locally might take a room at the church and have a lovely reception.  Maybe just a little adoration will

be allowed from the family she is running to and her traveling companion.  She has made it very clear she knows the way with her eyes closed.  Lover of maps and adventure the road is always beckoning.  She will go anyway, anyhow, except why fly when you can get in the car and ride for eight or nine hours with birthday luck.  In her car, let me make that very clear.  Car love - seriously.

She loves the smell of new tires and squirrels away secret bars of chocolate.  She is the designated driver in her group of ladies because she can still see at night.  Her mahogany dining room table is always covered in a partial jigsaw puzzle and scattered pieces.  She has everything she needs but she doesn't want too much.  There is no excess of anything in her life except time spent at her computer playing games.  Shopping for shopping's sake doesn't interest her but she loves pretty new clothes.  I heard it from her first, a good bag and good shoes.  She is right but then again, she is right most of the time.

Impeccable taste and fashion advice.  Lipstick, powder and a good haircut.  Blue eyes and simple beauty a teenager who loved makeup could never understand.  Mama blue.  A house with nothing out of place.  A sofa, a chair, a table placement stays forever.

There is nothing in life that can't be cured by writing thank you notes, washing dishes, putting a hot supper on the table.  Writing monthly bills and watching the stock market keep her mind zippy along with crossword puzzles and staying busy.

There is a trophy on the shelf from the days of her life playing tennis.  And every Bible our family has ever purchased or received.  But she doesn't wear her faith on her sleeve.  She just shows up with whatever meets the need - deviled eggs, chocolate pie or a ham.  And she is quick to let the preacher know how she feels after sitting on the first row at church.  Nothing gets past her.

Especially raising two girls.  Waiting in the wingchair in the dark at 3.  Surprise.  Bacon and eggs for breakfast before church, after a college daughter ran around all night disco dancing.  Surprise.  Taking calls from a concerned professor, politely.  Surprise, your professor called.  Germany?  Really?  Can't see the forest for the trees.  There is this young friend of mine.

Goldwater.  Dallas tears and fears.  Presidential volunteering.  No knives of any kind but disbelief that the Secret Service would really take away his beloved pen knife at the Presidential Library Opening.

Games, always, everyday a full roster.  The Original Cowboy fan, through thick and thin and thick and thin, swaying her day.  World-stopping devotion.  A golf swing but never a player.  Tennis, tennis and more tennis.  Now aerobics to keep her moving.

To lunch but rarely dinner.  A circle of widow ladies with welcoming arms.  Whirlwind socializing.  Book review with a plate of cookies.  Symphony for the children.  Traveling just for a piece of the famous homemade pie.

Every second of every minute figured out weeks in advance, the gift of analyzing bridge twice a week for years.  Tournaments and points and good friends and manners.

The love of family but "when are you leaving" as you walk in the door.  Preparation for leaving.  Holiday dinners with just enough.  Too much leftover dressing would not do.  Leftovers are only tomorrow's meal in three weeks from the freezer.  A lifetime of little lidded cups containing mere tablespoons.  Waste not, want not.  But it was the chili, just that once.

Standing on the tarmac in her winter coat in Morocco.  Left waiting on her Naval Officer because he was right in third grade but wrong about her arrival time.  As fast as she could pack, catch a December train and a transport plane, first flight to a world only imagined in Hollywood.  Tales that would last a lifetime, the yearly tradition of a little ting of the bell on the Christmas corsage he grabbed on the way out the door of a borrowed apartment already full of presents for his bride.

Working day's end, she and two babies, bathed, freshly dressed, hot supper, everything waiting for his hand upon the door, his castle - their world.  A lively conversation that never ended until the middle of one dark morning.  Why do old people always want to know what time it is in the middle of the night?

Chopped onion and celery sautéing in a pan when he walks in the door and he will think you have really done something.  When Jesus comes, you are going to say "Just a minute, Jesus!"  Do it now.  Just do it, when the going gets tough.  One roll is enough.  Go fix the cornbread.  Are you working on your book?  What about the story?  You take too many pictures.  I don't need a cat.  Don't you dare get me a cat.  I'm not big on fruit.   I used to think I could eat a whole pot roast.   I don't eat all day, except a coke at lunch.    I'd go without but I always have six eyes looking back at me.  Happy Altoids!

No party for me.  Eighty is old.  I don't know how many years I have left (but her mother lived to ninety-three.)  True.  Pull out the map.  Check the itinerary.  Some items marked will be drive-by viewings only.  California.  New England.  Italy.  New Orleans.  Her bags are packed.  Here we come Rome.  Let the whirlwind commence.


signed,

a girl who loves her Mama

A LITTLE DITTY FOR DANDELIONS

Poetry Month will end too soon! Four more days.

With all of the rain, we are slogging through puddles. Green is all you can see now, but to be remembered in October. This pouffy flower will be popping up soon. I dare you not to lean over and grab a few stems and watch the magic of their flight.

DANDELIONS

Springtime showers

Filled my days,

Puddles ruined my shoes.

I cussed and complained

About the incessant rain

Although it did no good.

Clouds never cleared for blue skies,

Ground mushed beneath my feet,

And why,

All this mess,

Just for flowers?

Gladiously glourolas grew

Between roses’ fragrant blooms,

Amid violet irises heights,

But the most delicate and lacking in beauty,

The dandelion.

Dandelions,

Such a common weed

But nourished as the others,

Grew in abundance under the Texas sun,

Waiting for winds

To send the seeds sailing.

Briefly,

The dandelions flourished,

But then we met

And that’s the story of the dandelions’ demise.

Explanatorily speaking,

We blew them to the sky,

In our hair and in our eyes,

We couldn’t outdo the other,

Our hands grabbed the delicate seeds.

I forgot what my earlier days had taught

A wish blown on a dandelion

Will come true in time.

If you run across a dandelion

Please make a wish for me,

Just wish we’ll meet again,

In the springtime,

So we can wish on dandelions.

THE HONEST TRUTH - A SECRET IN THE HOUSE April Month of Poetry

The poem you are about to read is true. And I am not the first to discuss the information. The New Yorker, October 21, 2013 Issue  Books - Briefly Noted gives a short review of Bridget Jones: Mad About the Boy, by Helen Fielding. Faced with a new life raising two children, the book opens with the children having head lice. I will have to read it and compare it to my experience.

Which is a major panic. The ordeal of buying every lice killing product for the scalp and armloads of spray for every surface anyone may have touched in the house. And bagging up any pillow, comforter, hat, stuffed animal, couch cushion into outdoor bags for smotherification, tossed into the garage. Not to be opened for a month or two. (?) The constant inspection. Switching products. Sleeping under fumigated bedding. It can drive a body mad.

I give you my honest rendition.

A SECRET IN THE HOUSE

Alas, my beautiful hair

Did not survive a menacing snare.

No more trips to the chic salon,

I bought new “hair” and pulled it on.

This lack of locks was not from stress or disease.

I had a secret in my house

-a louse who wouldn’t leave.

Lucky me, the patient survived.

But after days of living in the waiting room

I discovered my “guest” in glorious bloom.

Despite my constant perusal

This thing was not easily removable.

Lathered in chemical foams with label warnings

Of damage to my brain,

A fortune in prescriptions washed down the drain.

After months of hidden despair I gave up my medicated hair.

Fresh and free and bald as a baby,

No longer crazy over a bug too small to see

Without good light and scrutiny.

Society thinks “nice” people do not have lice

But no one is immune.

I survived the menacing snare.

All it cost me was my hair.

Amy Holt Taylor @2011

FRED THE TOM CAT - THE FIRST

April always sweeps me away. Then I come to my senses and realize April is Poetry Month. And I have not presented a post about one of my favorite subjects. Today is the day. One of the first of more to come. But just in case, I have picked three quick, simple poems.

Fred The Tom Cat is my first poem complete with illustration. I found this gem in a book titled Stories and Poems. In all of my eleven year old glory. As is.

FRED TOM CAT

Hello, I'm Fred Tom Cat

When I walk by people

they say, "Scat you dirty
rat!"
Now lets make this clear.
I should cause no fear.
I do not bite.
Even though I fight.
I have a wife,
She leads a normal
life.
I have three kittens,
They have their own mittens.
Our house is a big box,
Our beds are a couple
of socks.
My salery is fair,
Even though its is a
terrfic scare.
We eat fish,
Right out of a dish.
Today put out some cream
If a Tom Cat gulps it
down, don't scream.

*********

Seven Falls was written for the last page of my daughter's high school graduation scrapbook. The poem is placed next to a photo of the maple trees - the picture shot on the very fall day we danced as three.

SEVEN FALLS

BabyBird,

your story begins with a pile of leaves from the red maple trees

standing in front of Mama and Daddy’s home.

A student was raking leaves for the BSU at the U of A.

He caught my Mama’s eye,

and she was not the type of Mama who had ever gotten caught

worrying over beaus and grooms.

She just handed him a broom.

Months later, in the middle of summer

she was reading the paper and said,

“There’s my friend.”

I could not have known then

when she first said his name—

our traveled road would be the same.

On the fall afternoon when he had finished his job

he told Mama goodbye and handed her the broom—

the unsuspecting groom—

none of us ever would have guessed.

Seven falls down the road would find we three—

our family—

dancing with you in our arms

beneath the glow of the red maple trees

where he’d raked leaves seven years before. 

*********

Three 3 O'clock A.M. In the middle of the night, really morning. Waking up, putting on my robe and walking into the den. Turning on the lamp. A bump in the night wakes me up. In this case, snoring. I have written poems in total darkness but a circle of light is my preference. A clear spot on any piece of paper will do. 

THREE O’CLOCK A.M.

Three o’clock in the morning

Sounds like a snoring wall,

Joints creaking in relaxation,

The power of 1 AA battery marking the second

boxed in a red metal clock high on the shelf.

Dark and quiet.

When most people are fast asleep.

A.M.

I am awake without effort

Or caffeine

But a mind that won’t stop

Counting numbers in the dark

Without thinking

Of what to wear in ten days

On a Saturday

Three days after I turn fifty

And the color on my toes

But paler on my fingers

I will wear “Happy to Me.”

Happy to be me

Maybe not always

But always grateful for the love in my life

That has helped me get here.

A station in life

Not the stop I wanted

Or the brochure picked out

But still waiting

Breathless

Excited for the next trip.

Always grateful

Even for an illness trying to pull me down,

Showing me weak and on my knees.

Grateful for grace

That reaches down and lifts me

Back to a good day walking

Across a pebbled lot crunching

With the sun in my face

And air in my lungs.

Life in my bones,

These fifty year old bones

Carrying around the heart of a sixteen year old girl.

Amy Holt Taylor@2018