Ode to a Rose

I have a sister and her name is Lily Rose, and she is pregnant.

When Mama was pregnant with this sister I was seven. I had an older brother but until then I had been the baby. I don't remember if I was reluctant to relinquish that position, I only remember being excited. I told my friends at school that I was going to be a big sister soon, and that she would be born at home, and that I would get to see. 

I'd seen pregnant ladies before, but none so close up and personal as this. I watched my Mama's belly grow to outrageous proportions and I accepted it as the norm. My Mama was my first baby maker teacher and she was a very good one. It did not seem easy to carry this baby. Mama sweated through the hot Florida summer with that belly poking out. She washed herself in cold Wakulla waters, she ate chili dogs, she wrapped herself in magnificent zebra print maternity, and sometimes a scarf flecked with rose and gold tight around her middle, and no it did not seem easy but she made it glamorous.

When my sister came we were allowed to stay home from school. As my Mama labored, walking around the house and deck wearing only amethyst beads and  my stepfather's tie-dyed t-shirt, her friends came outside and told us not to be afraid. 

My brother and I were not afraid! We had been told all about this! We had been told by our very own Mama! We were busy playing! All day we made everyone wreaths of morning glory to wear in their hair to welcome the baby, and we played our secret made-up games where my brother was the king and I was everyone else.

That is how Lily came into the world, with friends and family all around. I remember there were so many flowers and so many of them were lilies and roses. 

Lily was my first baby teacher. I learned how to squish her rubbery little arms into tiny cotton shirts, I learned how to change a cloth diaper and wipe a wee butt. I learned how to walk and walk with her baby bean body until my skinny arms were cheese and I had to pass her off to someone else.

Sometimes I was not the best big sister. She was a force from the moment she was born, a howling tempest with feet that stamped the air and fists raised high in grand protest. I lost my temper. I lost my patience. My mother lost her sleep and her mind. I got off easy.

Here's the deal- we always talk about how difficult she was but what we forget to say is that she did not frighten us off. When Mama got pregnant again three years later I never once thought Oh God here we go again.... I was just as excited for another. As feisty as she was, I loved her furiously. I used to make nests for her on the floor out of blankets and toys all around so that wherever she looked there was something fun. She had a stuffed caterpillar that she called a callipiller and so I called her Lilipiller, and I still do.

Now she is all grown up and the girl who was my first baby teacher is now my second baby maker teacher.

I haven't written about her pregnancy because my Mama has done such a good job at that over at Bless Our Hearts, but I was looking at her today and she looked tired and a little worn and oh so beautiful. I have never seen such a beautiful woman in my life.

She glows, she really does. I watch her belly grow and it is not so much a swelling as it is a blossoming. She was lovely before but now she is opening, like, yes, a rose. When I'm around her I want to touch her, I want to press my face to her skin, rub her under my chin like a buttercup. I want to smell her. She smells like baby.

 I never would have guessed that this girl, this baby, would have a baby before me but I am lucky for it. If and when I am so blessed I only hope that I will have one half the grace she does now.

My luv is like a red red rose. She walks in beauty like the night. I have no words, no words to speak of her or of how I love her. I have a sister. Her name is Lily Rose and she is pregnant.

 

Look at someone else, Learn about myself

I'd like to talk about pain. Not the pain of heartbreak, although a friend of mine asked me about that the other day because he'd never experienced that before. I told him that it was the worst to get your heart really broken, the most physical and emotion tearing you can imagine and the worst part of it is no one cares.... but no. Heartbreak, blah. If you're lucky you'll know it. It's bad but it's boring. Unless you're going through it and the I'm sorry for you. Go ahead and call me at 4:AM and I will drowse while you cry.

Ah but pain. Pain the body breaking down. Pain an injury. Pain a break. Pain a smash. Pain a growth that knocks your insides around. Pain with jagged edges, with teeth that bite and claws that catch. It's so personal and so relative and we really don't know how to deal with it.

My sweet girl, my baby sister Honey Luna just posted on her blog, Finding Those Dulcet Tones talking about her knee pain, and discovering that after all these years of us telling her that it's nothing, it's something. I feel bad about this.

Not too bad. I'm not rending my clothes or anything, and actually I'm glad that it's something, that she can get it fixed. She just.... well, it's a matter of timing. 

This girl grew up so fast. I mean that literally. At one point she was small, and then over a few short years she grew about three feet. It was a foot a year, like a teak tree, and sometimes I thought that I could see her growing before my eyes, and her legs hurt. Now when I see her I say, "Nice Stems Baby-Cakes!" but of course her legs hurt her! She is not a tree, she is a Girl. Bones and tissue and muscle, sinew and tendon, racing and unfurling inside her stretching skin, she hurt. When her knees started hurting she was still growing and we were used to saying "Oh Baby, you hurt because you are tall". In retrospect it doesn't make a lot of sense, but none of us can deal with the pain of those we love. We didn't want to get down in the guts of her pain and ask, "Is this a new pain? Describe your pain."

Describe your pain. Well. It's an aching. Sometimes. And a sharp where it should be smooth. It feels like a crunch, and I may have gear sheers in there, but sometimes it is a jump pain like a shot that makes you jump. I have a buzzing, there is a tender buzzing that is pink but when it is red there is a stinging and then the bits are all angry. Sometimes it is not a pain at all but a weight, the area is filled with lead I have to drag it and it doesn't move when I tell it to move and sometimes I fall. Sometimes the pain is a coming out pain, like the bones are swelling and will burst through my skin and sometimes the pain is a smashing crushing, an ever so slow and tightening vise that turns and turns. Something like that.

That's my pain, from my magically healed bum leg, that gives me my sexy gimp walk (Gimps up, ho's down) but what good does it do to say it?

I remember when I was in recovery from my accident and nurses would ask me to rate my pain, 1-10. I really stressed out about that, probably because I was all wooped up on percoset and morphine, but what I wanted to know is, what are their reference points? If I said 3, what does that mean to them? All they wanted to know was could I stand it and did I need more medication but it seemed so existential to me. How do you rate pain? Every day you live your pain meter changes, every one's is different. Have you had a child? Do you suffer migraines? Have you been punched in the nose and boy that hurt? Is your pain as bad or worse than when you swallow a potato chip you haven't chewed properly? Is your pain as bad or worse than if someone were to stand on your calves and wiggle around? Have you been hit by a car? Have you any tears and cysts in your knee?

It reminds me of when old men joke about stomping on your foot to take your mind off the pain of your ear. THAT would actually be helpful. YES! YES IT HURTS WORSE THAN THAT!

Then there's my girl, and how she's been walking around so tough. We do want to be so tough, don't we? We don't want to complain, because we don't want to be complainers or martyrs or, god forbid, pussies. But who has the wimp-o-meter? Where are the pain police? 

I don't feel too bad about not addressing my sister's pain, because she has been so quiet about it, but what I do feel bad about is maybe I like that I'm in pain? That I gain some sort of sick personal power from my constant ache? I don't hurt myself on purpose, but somewhere down the road of dealing with my chronic pain I've made it into one of the things that makes me special. And I want to be special. And I think that this has made me less sympathetic when someone else is in pain. Instead of feeling tender toward them I feel a cold comradeship. I don't like this side of myself. I don't know how I could have gotten to the place where I thought misery made me anything but miserable. I'm only really able to see this now because I do feel tender toward my sister, if there is any one on this earth I feel that soft protectiveness for it is my baby sisters. How can I call myself kind when I am so unkind and so uncharitable toward the people around me, and to myself?

It's such a delicate balance between being strong and stone. I am not glad that my loved ones feel pain, but I am grateful that there are people I love that help me see the softness in my heart, and the selfishness too. I'm so glad that her knees can be fixed, and that some pain is not necessary. 

Ah me, this has ended up so far from where I thought I was going. Start out so sassy and end up so introspective. I have to learn to be more gentle. And not so serious all the damn time.

     

 Okay Honey Luna! Get your knees fixed girl! You are far too tall to not be able to squat.

We Are Still Cool. Thanks Dads.

Happy Smappy, Hanky Slanky

Yesterday we went to the river.

Day before yesterday I was being a baby about it. 

"I don't want to go to the river", I told my Mama. "I don't like to be on a boat. You can't walk around, you can't leave, you can't pee when you want to. Then we're going to a bar. If there's any place I want to eat and drink to excess, it's in a bar by the river."

"If it's beyond your comfort zone, you don't have to go" she said.

"It's for Hank, of course I will go."

        I am a forgetful girl, and a contrary girl. Sometimes I can be a very stubborn girl, but if there's one thing I should remember, it's to trust my brother.

My brother is a genius. He taught himself to read when he was three using the Playschool play desk. I only learned how to read when he stopped being so kind as to read to me. I was seven. He told me when I was eleven that I did not feel the opposite of love when I purported to hate my first-kiss boy, that disinterest was the opposite of love. He taught me the difference between 2-D and 3-D by holding his fist beneath my nose ("THIS is 3-D") when I was five or six. He let me stay ignorant when I thought that a mini skirt was named after Minnie Mouse, and when I thought I could run as fast as the wind. When I went out of my head at college in Sarasota he let me come to him in St.Pete, he took me to vintage shops, he let me walk around in leather and wood platforms I bought there, he bought me bloodthick island juice, and he let me sleep while he wrote my gender studies paper for me. And when he wanted to go to the river for his birthday, I didn't want to go, but I went anyway.

We docked at St. Marks and ate at the Riverside where we could tie up our boat and walk up the ramp. Mama watched me with a keen eye and pointed out the steamed vegetables on the menu. I was smelling the fish and the water, that delicious river stank, and I ordered the peel-and-eat shrimp because I wanted that swamp water in my gut, and I'm glad I did. Our waitress was inept and spacey with leather skin and her lips a violent slash, I wanted to be her for a moment, but I let it pass.

With our bellies full we were all hands on deck and the river looked the other way as we slipped onto her back bone. Shrimp in my mouth and all down my hands, river in my eyes and nose, and boat hum in my ears, I finally relaxed and let it all go.

It is the river and it is June. The jungle on either side of us and at bends up ahead was full-on green, fecund and breathing. Each waterpath away from the main stream gave us glimpses of whole other worlds, adventures of sleeping girls, pirates, and horrible screaming blood sucking spiders, it made my mind go wild while the river kept my heart a steady beat. We saw turtles, we saw birds, we saw a great goddamn boat, and when Daddy climbed the bow to pick a swamp magnolia he did not fall off.

The river is not tied up in knots, it is a loosening thing. I get so twisted in my head sometimes, my face and stomach pinched, trying to work out all the end results so I won't be caught unawares. The slowly slip and glide of the water worked it's magic on me and reminded me that I am just an animal, made to smell and feel and prick up my ears. I felt no pain. We were in paradise all around, and when Daddy took the boat very fast we were flying through it. At one point I even went swimming.

 And to think I didn't want to go! Sometimes I think I am quite stupid without my brother. He can make me do anything, thank god. 

This week is his birthday, starting yesterday. Hank gets a whole week of birthdays, just because he can. I'm going to dredge up my old self. I'm going to rabble rouse around him. I'm going to punch him and kick him. I'm going to hug him on the neck. Maybe I will get him a goat cart for his birthday! (just kidding) (not kidding) (just kidding) Maybe I will get him nothing! He will love me anyway! 

You are a very fine thing, you dastard, you bastard. You may not be thoughtful sometimes, but you are the knowingest man I ever met. Happy Fucking Birthday! I love you till the river falls off the earth, and straight on till morning.

p.s.

     If you want to see pictures, go over to my blog list and click on Bless Our Hearts. (Thanks for having our boy, Mama.)