Boasting a bit

On Call

when the phone rings
at 2, or 10 or 4 in the morning
i know, this time,
it is not my emergency,
but I check the bedrooms of my daughters
just to be sure


someone else has been harmed tonight.
i drive to the hospital
to hold the hand of a stranger

she is 13 and it was her neighbor
she is 18 and it was that cute boy at the club
she is 40 and it was her husband

they stand on white paper
and remove their clothes
lie on a bed in the dark, swept with a blue light
they are combed and plucked and photographed

i hold their hands.
sometimes the shape of their fingernails
stay in my skin for hours

when they have told their story to the police
and are delivered into arms that love them
i drive home in the dark
and check the bedrooms of my daughters
just to be sure

Bittersweet

The fall is here. So is my seasonal nostalgia.

Somebody, somewhere said the word, bittersweet, and I remembered going out with my mother and her clippers; cutting this plant and decorating the house and the front door.
She loved bittersweet but always told me it was illegal to cut. Is this true? I'm not sure because she also told me it was illegal to drive barefoot.

We don't have bittersweet here on the island. Our soil, if it can be called that with the high amount of sand in it, is different than that which I grew up with too. Here, when I dig I find shells. At home, my hands came out of the garden sparkling with flakes of mica.

It is rainy here today and thinking and remembering, curled up in blankets is the order of the day.

Addiction

I have neither sympathy nor empathy for addicts of any kind. Unpopular as that opinion may be since the advent of the belief system that addiction is a disease, I cannot change my mind.

Growing up I was surrounded by alcoholics, raised by children of alcoholics and watched many family members become addicts of some type or another. Even my own daughter.

Underlying the addiction of most people is a mental illness. That is the disease that causes self-medication by drugs or alcohol.

When you see yourself losing everything; jobs, family, friends, respect and you still indulge your "disease" you are making a choice. A choice not to attend to yourself or your health. A choice to live in denial of the effect you are having on those who love you.

I KNOW I have every risk factor for becoming an addict; I have a family history, depression and anxiety and every time I take a pain pill for a migraine or dental work and like it just a little too much, I am careful. Because my life and my family and my friends mean too much to me to ruin it all. Oh, I can see how it easy it would be to sink into that comfortable, foggy feeling and I don't. My daughter, whom I thought I had lost, has turned her life into something lovely. And she and I are no better or smarter or stronger than anyone else.
We simply choose life, with all its beauty and pain and struggles.

You can probably tell that I am angry. I am. I am furious that someone I love is choosing a substance over life. Angry that a case of beer is more important than food in the house, love in the house, life in the house. And I am sad that sometimes love just isn't enough.

Space

I am not talking about the final frontier. I am speaking of mental space. I have some.
It pleases me.

I must have missed something

The other day I headed out to the bank; drove right up to where the drive-up ATM is, and IT'S GONE! POOF!
So, I drive back around the parking lot to the drive-up window and see a new ATM, in front of the bank. One where you must get out of your car and walk-up.
" Oh, I guess we will have two now. They must be getting ready to put in a new drive-up one as well."
When I get to the window with a real live person, I ask. And the answer is no, they are NOT installing a new drive-up ATM.
We are going back in time here folks. I did a quick check in the mirror to see if I, too, had gone back in time and was only 27. Nope.
The teller was unable to give me a reason behind the decision. That made me more angry. I cannot let this go; it is becoming an obsession. What were they thinking? How can this possibly enhance my banking experience? Now, I can up the odds of being robbed! I can get wet, and cold! I'll bet my banking fees will go up now to pay for this new inconvenience.
Woo hoo!