Making Do

Easter, 1957

Tachikawa AFB, Japan

Handmade dress by Mom

Photo by Daddy

I often suffer from illusions of grandeur.  I tend to move in the world as though money is no object.  I volunteer relentlessly, give my knowledge away for free and frequently discount my art down to only the cost of supplies.   I don’t know if that feeling of being rich comes from my mother always making sure we had new shoes at the beginning of each school year,  sewed me beautiful clothes and created magnificent Christmases, or growing up in the military.

Apparently in 1958 my desires got the best of me and the only way my mother could address my wants was to sit me down and remind me how hard my daddy worked for what little we had.

Easter, 1957

The rest of the family

Steve, Raworth, Lamar, Mom and Dad

Photo by me

Making Do

By day

a Tech Sergeant

in the

USAF

Daddy drove

a cab

at night

1958

380 a month

25 a week

for groceries

7 kids

1 pair of shoes

each

10 cents

for cub scout

meetings

the whole house

searched

for that

dime.

Johnny's Story

Author, Johnny, 1989

When you're a writer, never pass up an opportunity to perform.  So I would read my new work every every chance I got.  Which often meant at the kitchen table to family.  They were my best audience.  As always, kids are watching you're every move.  A few days after I read the story Innocence Johnny brings this typewritten paper to me.  "Have you read my story?" he asked.  "No I haven't," I replied and asked him to read it to me.  He held it up and read, "No pooping on the toilet!"  End of story.

 Johnny and Nightsnow

Partners in Crime

Four Minute Horror

Johnny, 1989

 Sometimes, as parents, we make mistakes.  Well, actually, it’s more like frequently.  And when we do, there’s not much we can do about it.  Except listen.

Four Minute Horror

The horror, the four minute horror of the fair last night, the excitement in Johnny’s face, the trusting, “I can handle anything” look, so sweet, considering he didn’t even know there was anything to handle.  This was the trust of a four-year-old, expecting it all to be fun as he walked up the ramp and proudly showed the carnival man the unlimited ride stamp on his hand. 

I watched it all.  I watched as he squeezed in between his older brother and sister, the rock and roll music blaring, his brother, double-checking twice the crossover bar strap.

It had seemed like a simple ride, round in a circle, up and down, wavy.  I hadn’t noticed that it went so fast.  There were other young children.  They seemed to do fine.  But in retrospect, none were quite as young as Johnny.  There wasn’t one of those ‘must be taller than this’ signs so I trusted their judgment.  I hadn’t noticed that the ride goes faster and faster and that it lasted such a long time until I heard the voice of the DJ say, “let’s go a little faster” and I watched my son’s face.

The first time around was fine but the speed picked up and the music grew louder and lights started flashing and then I noticed the wave affect.  The second time around the face of fear set in.  I never really heard his scream.  I only saw him scream.  I saw a scared scream, a real scream, a “I’m not having fun” scream.  I saw his screaming eyes.  I saw his screaming mouth open wide.  The music grew louder and the lights flashed and again the DJ says, “let’s go a little faster!” And everyone was loving it, laughing and swinging their arms, except one little unsupecting, trusting soul.

Stop! Please stop! I wanted to scream. “I made a mistake.  He isn’t old enough.  I didn’t know.”  But I couldn’t stop it.  I could only stand there and watch as it went round and round, picking up speed each time.  His frightened face flashed past, faster and faster, his older brother struggling to comfort him, covering his eyes.

I saw his screaming mouth open wide and then close, his body go stiff, his brother’s arms wrapped around him as they flashed past, again.  “Let’s go a little faster,” the DJ says again.  NO! NO! STOP! STOP! How much longer is this going to last?  Fun faces flashed faster, dotted with the young frightened face of my child and then, the music finally slowed and the lights dimmed as they climbed out and staggered towards me.  I sighed, relieved, picked him up and asked, softly, “how was it?”

“Dead,” he said.  “I got dead.”

Bound and Determined

 

What’s your legacy?

 It’s clear, at this point if I don't do something, 

my legacy will be lots of boxes filled with mementos. 

At my daughter, Dana’s suggestion, that I create a blog of all my writing and at my daughter, Danielle’s suggestion that Larry and I put our music and poetry together and create  podcasts, I begin to dig into those old boxes and become overwhelmed.  What am I to do with all this stuff?  Maybe it’s the discovery of an early menopause poem that’s gotten me to thinking.  It’s easy to become overwhelmed and decide to just let the kids dig through it after we’re gone.  Whose responsibility is it to create the story, the legacy of one’s life?  Let everyone pick what they want and create whatever story they want?  And what’s left ends up in a garage sale, or at Calvin Kinnet’s, the local antique/junk dealer.  Frequently I peruse his recent acquisitions and ponder the story no one wanted to tell.   In the nineties when I read Carolyn Heilburn’s book, Writing a Woman’s Life she wrote about the importance of writing one’s life in advance of living it. I took her serious. I was in my forties and I wrote about how I saw myself as a writer, an artist, a mother. This mission is what drove many of my writing practices.  Now, that I am 67 it’s time to revisit that mission.  And what better way than looking back, digging in those boxes, and then looking forward to define my future. At 66, Heilburn said, “Aging's just another word for nothing left to lose.”  In the same way that everyone has a story to tell and it’s important to give it a voice, it’s important that we mine those stories for the legacy we have to pass down and I’m bound and determined to not shove those boxes back under the bed.

Bound and Determined

I was in the throes of missing another cycle.  Is that what the roll around the middle is really about as the tight skirt is more difficult to zip up and I wonder why I wore girdles at the beginning of puberty when menopause is when I need them but have out grown the desire?

The roll creases my jeans, now that I have moved into women’s sizes.  Just last week when I called my mom long distance she told me she found a new brand.  It was information I welcomed but didn’t want to receive.

I was bound and determined I would never have her big hips or her roll around the middle but not bound enough to eat less or exercise.  Bound enough to look in the mirror, though, to change my pose to see if, per chance, it had gone away.

It’s a slow coming that takes me on to the “I don’t care” and eating more greens as I begin to shop for looser fitting clothes and more sweats and practice asking for exactly what I want and make buttermilk coffeecake even when all the nuts sink to the middle.  Do you think I should stir the batter? ©1993

A Bound and Determined Crew

 Danielle, Dana, Me and Donnie

The Craft of Writing

 Mom, Grace Laverne, models her own design, 1958

I model my recycled, shibori dyed tunic and jacket, 2012

I title this poem The Craft of Writing even though it is about my mother making a quilt.  Ultimately it’s all the same when we are being creative.  All our works of art engage the principles of organization and design, and the elements of art.  Even as a hair designer and running a business.  I didn’t know it then, but looking back I can see it.  To be creative is to respond to each moment with lines and color, etc implementing rhythm, variety, etc.  I love that my mother sewed and taught me to sew.  She modeled her creations.  I modeled mine, including the recycled tunic and jacket that I shibori dyed.  She sewed clothing for me and I sewed for my daughters and they too, modeled.

The Craft of Writing

The quilt my mother made me

sent me in the mail

lays on my bed

a legacy

handmade

by Grace

1990

the tag in the corner says

The craft of quilting

she learned

all by herself

from Woman’s Day

and Family Circle

and The Ladies Home Journal

quilts seen in designer homes

dreamed in her own

directions cut

from magazines saved

scraps of polyester sewn

mine is cotton cool cotton

red and white

circles and squares

the red, dotted swiss

the white, muslin

slowly stitched together

my hand moves across the page

spreading words on white

©1990

Mom sewed my 1964

prom dress

I'm on the right

She sewed my wedding dress in 1965

I sewed for Dana and Danielle

and they modeled for me

Amber Moon & The Working Class Kitchen

Amber Moon Casino Night Fundraiser

Mid eighties

 

I discovered my community among women who sang and rocked their babies to sleep.  When we went out looking for jobs in the early seventies there was no line on the application to describe the work that we did.  There was no way to put it on a resume.  It was by attending Amber Moon concerts featuring the strong voices of women performing songs that spoke to women’s lives that began to reveal to me the power of our words and performing them.  And it was by becoming involved with the Amber Moon Collective to produce the concerts and fundraisers that I began to feel the value of women coming together make these events happen.  I learned to never pass up an opportunity to perform and carried my writing with me.  When the performer for one concert was late and I was asked if I wanted to read some of my poems.  I walked on the stage and took the mic.  I knew I had something to say.  And I knew that lots of women had something to say.  I felt the fire of being heard.  There was no turning back. Eventually I created the Working Class Kitchen to create opportunities for emerging writers to come to the microphone.

The Working Class Kitchen Manifesto

They tell us to write, the scholars we find on bookshelves, the outspoken women we hear at lectures and conferences and in our own midst.  They tell the uneducated, the non-academic, the rural women, the poor women, the inner city women, the stay at home mom, they tell us to write.  So we write.  We write at the kitchen table and at the stop-lights and between appointments.

We write and we find our hearts aching to spill it out.  We find our soul wanting to scream it.  We find our life rise up out of the pages.  We find rhythm and music in our words.  We find stories we’ve told and retold and we discover we have desires we never knew we had and we desire to write more.

We desire to be heard and we want to read it and even when we’re afraid to read it, we want to read it and even when we’re too shy to read it, we wish we weren’t and when we’re ready, when we want someone to hear it, no one is listening, ‘cause there’s nowhere to read it.  The academic feminist is too busy making speeches and her publisher wants polished pieces written in penta something meter or in proper English and university classes take time and money we don’t have.

The Working Class Kitchen creates another stage, someone’s home, a local restaurant, a community center.  It brings any combination of writers to create an event.  We invite six writers from different communities and they invite six friends and we have an audience of 36.  The script is left wide open.  Read what you want, how you want, wear what you want.  And what is read is good, without a jury, without an “A,” without publication because the WCK trusts the process.  Only that which one feels good and right creates the desire for it to be heard, creates the determination to ask to be heard, to show up and put it forth.

At the Working Class Kitchen we break down the silencing walls of nowhere to read it and put it back in the kitchen where the world moves to the microphone.  The writer’s fear, when she reads her work, sometimes for the first time, gives power to her words.  Her strength gives form to her voice.  Her anticipation leads you across the page and you listen, intent, and even when you don’t hear, you see.  You see her facing fear.  You see her dancing naked.  You hear the sounds of her voice shaking and the vibrations resonate through you and you be still and you listen because you see the birth of life before your very eyes.  You see a revolution.

You don’t have to be working class to read at The Working Class Kitchen, you just have to wish you were.  Everyone has The Working Class Kitchen in them somewhere.  If you have to race your paycheck to the bank you’re got it in there.  The heritage we came from is buried deep.  The struggle to survive is The Working Class Kitchen.  The desire to not give up, the valuing it—NOW, not waiting for an A, not waiting for publication, not waiting for the check in the mail.

We want to hear it in your words, in your tone, in your voice.  We want to see it written the way you spell it, the way your hear it.  We want to break down the walls of illusion of false education keeping us silent because we don’t write it their way, see it their way, dream it their way, believe it their way.  And everyone has a “their way” in there somewhere.  Everyone has a “their way” that tells them what to do.  Everyone has a “their way” that they want to break through and the only way out is through your own voice.

So read it at THE WORKING CLASS KITCHEN.

(c)1990

Baby you’re doing your best

Johnny

 Just for the record, it isn’t easy, parenting, and kids aren’t always happy.  Nonetheless, I had a knowing.  "I know what I’m doing," I told advice givers.  I listened, but deep down inside I knew what I was doing.  And you do too.  With the advent of so many books, talk shows and advice columns on how to parent many parents forget they have a knowing, they second guess their decisions and fall prey to one expert after another.  It’s really very simple. Just come from love and never send your children off for the day, or to bed angry.  Always make peace.  And remember, no matter what they do, always be their advocate. If you don’t, who will? 

Me and Johnny

 Baby you’re doing your best 

I’m a failure I feel inside

in turmoil and distress

I sweet talk myself

baby, you’re doin’ your best

my dear little child

all of three years

screechin’ and screamin’

sweet as can be

sayin’ please and thank you

with hugs and kisses

cryin’ and yellin’

how can this be?

I sweet talk myself

baby, you never knew

it would turn out like this

the house is quitet

I hear a voice inside

soft singing me

soothing me

as I near cry

I ponder and sigh

that place in my chest

between my breast

aches

for the love of my children

I rant and rave

I be silent and sweet

he kicks he cries

off to his room

throws toys and hollers

stay out!

oh baby, my heart cries

for your wounded soul

as those tears roll down

those contented peaceful

eyes now drenched

look out

I’m a failure I feel in side

in turmoil and distress

I sweet talk myself

baby, you’re doin’ your best

(C) 1991

 Dad, Mom and me

Reflection