Well sticking your hand up a turkey’s butt is enough to make anyone a vegetarian and doing this at 7a.m. before coffee is an act of utmost cruelty. Plus I have to get up and drive to work and shut off a kiln I decided to fire on Turkey Eve but it did give me a weekend undisturbed.
Tonight I am thinking about my children, how quickly they have grown and what amazing creatures they are. Olivia is almost eleven sprouting breasts and somehow my baby Bella is on her way to being seven and I have no idea how this happened.
I always call them the great purifiers of my life. They show me preciously where I have failed, where I have succeeded. After finishing my manuscript Olivia took me aside in a very serious way and said, “You know mom I’ve read some of those poems and nobody is going to make that book into a movie.” LMAO
She was trying to save me from hurt and rejection and saw the ultimate goal of any writer to be the big screen. It was hard to keep a straight face.
Their dad once told (in a very pissy voice) that he never understood why I wrote poetry. All my mistakes were written down for the whole world to see, for the children to read later in life. And that is what I leave them, this imperfect mom who daily tries to love them the best she can, who takes them along (without a choice most of the time) down this road of her failures and successes and hopes that when the turkey is done and they are grown, they don’t turn out to be serial killers….
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2 comments:
"...that when the turkey is done and they are grown, they don’t turn out to be serial killers…."
I think that's the best that anyone can hope for, really. :-) And if we don't make mistakes, how do we get better? Go, turkey butts!
Which is why I never, ever cook the turkey. Yikes.
In response to what your ex said to your daughters: And you divorced the guy? I can't imagine why. (smile)
You've read Lucille Clifton, haven't you? You know the poem she wrote about her mother feeding poems into the furnace? Burning red as rubies. Someday, your daughters will read your poetry and know you in a way they could otherwise have never known you if you hadn't taken the heart, the soul, the time, to commit your poetry to paper. Think of every poem as a ruby.
My most cherished possession is a poem scrawled on a piece of yellow legal paper written by my father who had a mildly hostile reaction to the concept of prose poems. I showed him "The Colonel" by Carolyn Forche---hey, isn't she the poet you've been working with?? He read it and declared: That's not poetry. He wanted to look through the rest of the book that poem was in (it was that Bill Moyer's book about the Dodge poetry festival), so I let him peruse it for a weekend. When he handed the book back to me, he also handed me the piece of paper with her poem reworked into rhyme and meter. God love him, he was such a traditionalist.
I miss him.
Happy Thanksgiving to you and yours, T.
Now, can someone tell me why the hell my pecan bars won't set up? GRRRRRRRRRRRRR. I should've learned my lesson last year when I attempted a brownie with a pecan pie topping which didn't set up either. So, once again, Laurel's contribution to the meal will be a pan of goo.(grin)
(of course, I did make a kickass pierogi casserole that appears to be edible...but I won't know for sure until it's served)
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