Overheard on sports-talk radio

(Referring to a famous football player)
"And if he can't make it with an ugly, pregnant, felon, then who can?"

The book of Job's wife

So I was avoiding revising my novel the other day by thinking of anything other than my novel ... like my miscarriages (I had two because of toxins in our water supply). And I remembered that in The Book of Job, God kills their ten children. So I wrote this poem from the point of view of Job's nameless wife.

Job’s wife

He gave it all back twofold,
so the story goes. Money, oxen, sheep.
“The Lord gave, and the Lord hath taken away,”
said he whose name is
righteous in the books of men,
those books that do not tell the names
of the ten children the Lord took
in vain. I escaped
alone to tell you:
Eli, the oldest,
had dark grieving eyes,
as if he saw his future falling
down upon him;
Rachel, my good girl, freckled
and plain, a bustling little mother
to the young ones;
Rona, little bird,
sang in perfect tune and pitch.
Dvora, the queen bee,
had eyes the color of honey
and a wit that could sting.
Baruch was slow and hid
behind my legs when strangers came;
Aaron and Lev,
the rascal twins, spoke conspiracies
with their eyes and smirked.
Micah, wild and fleet,
ran away from home three times. Now
I wish he had run faster.
And Zev - my last I thought;
his hair was red and curled
around his face like wisps of holy fire.
My children

did not curse the Lord. That day they gathered
together and, for the bread they were to eat,
they blessed the very Lord who felled the roof
that killed them.

I dug their graves and planted
my children in the ground
to grow like bitter herbs.
Job sat in the ashes
and called me foolish. Men came, scolded:
“This is the way of his joy and out of the earth
others shall grow.” As if that were enough.
“Great men are not always wise,” I snapped.

Now Job’s lips speak the names
of his rejoicing; Jemima, Keziah, Keren. Three
other daughters burnish him
like golden rings. Seven more sons raise
roofs they think are safe. But in the shadow
of my deaths I live blind
to his faith; an eye
does not replace an eye.
Only ten plus ten, and every single one
alive, would be enough for me. So I keep
my place. I am two verses
and a watchword in the good book
of God’s deeds. Nameless
as the dead, I stay and to his face I curse
the god who took my children. He
bet them like ten worthless coins,
in a game of dare with the devil
just to prove
His mighty
point.

Six-words

Browsing in the library, I came across a book called Six-Word Memoirs. So here are two I thought of for myself.

1. Grandfather jumped. SSRIs invented. I won't.

2. Two miscarried. Two adopted. Two more.


And here's one more for comic relief:
Skinny. Chubby. Slim. Pregnant. Chubby again.

I'd love to hear your six-word memoirs!

It's that time of year again....

Time for the end-of-the-year school talent show. Though perhaps talent isn't exactly the word for it. But they certainly make up in enthusiasm what they lack in skill. Have fun! I did.

Shamed into full disclosure

From Dill Pixels wonderful flickr stream.

I've been shamed by I need more cowbell and her prodigal-daughter blog update, to write a more complete update myself. Yeah, it really was an awful winter, but .... there was, of course, more going on below the shitty frozen surface of this long and shitty winter.

1. My husband

It's almost two years since my husband's last surgery and (better late than never!) I think I am finally getting "over" it. What that means is that I've finally incorporating into my life the reality that my husband has an incurable, life-threatening, condition instead of (as I had thought before) a one-time weird clotting condition that would be taken care of by surgery and blood thinners.

It's not an easy thing to accept. I worry whenever he's gone, whether it's out of town on a business trip, or out of the house for work. The only time I don't worry is when he's right next to me, where I can keep an eye on him, save him if he needs saving. Because my brilliant prize-winning husband is utterly incapable of taking care of himself. Seriously. This is the guy whose response to massive debilitating chest pain (from his swollen-to-the-point-of-bursting veins) is to decide to wait it out, hope it goes away, and not tell anyone. Good plan Einstein.

2. My novel

I love writing. It's easy for me and I'm good at it, and because of that, I write really good first drafts. I've even been lucky enough to have a couple of those first drafts (of short stories) published. So when I wrote my novel, part of me really truly thought that I could write it, send it in, and get it published too. But novels are big messy things and, unfortunately, I have to revise it. And revise it. And revise it. Revising isn't easy work and I don't like it because I'm not (yet) good at it. I would rather pull my toenails out one by one than revise my own work. I would rather clean house than revise my own work. And let's just say that my house is getting cleaned in places that have never been cleaned in the entire eight years that we've lived here.

But, with the help and advice of some very good readers and friends, I am slowly, painfully, dragging myself (kicking, screaming, whining, and hating every minute of it) through a real and deep revision. So you can see why sitting down to the computer to write even a blog entry might send me running for the mop, or the TV remote.

Anyway, those are my excuses for neglecting you. Oh, and did I mention that the weather was really really crappy?

Hello my darlings!

Well, the Guinness Book of World Records, the National Weather Service, as well as every other expert in the world has finally determined that this was the Shittiest Winter Ever. I personally went through all of Elizabeth Kubler Ross's five stages of grief about it and added a couple of my own.

1. Swine flu whining - All the kids got it, one by one. Just when I thought any given child was getting better and I might have a quiet day to myself, the next one would get it. Oddly, all my whining did not help them recover.

When that was over, it snowed and snowed and snowed and I responded with:

1a. Denial - "No that is NOT two-and-a-half feet of snow!"

Fat lot of good that did me. So I moved on to...

2. Anger - "God I hate this F**KING snow!" and "I grew up in the tropics! I shouldn't have to deal with this shit!" Again, not the most efficacious method of making snow go away. So I moved on to...

3. Bargaining - "If you shovel the sidewalks I promise I'll make all the dinners forever and ever." Again, fat lot of good.... guess who shoveled (and shoveled, and shoveled). God it's annoying to have a husband with a "serious medical condition" and a surgeon on call to prove same...

4. Depression - "Oh my god, it's snowing again? I am so depressed" ad nauseum. This went on for a loooooooong time.

I might eventually have moved on to acceptance (or not) had I not, instead, moved on to The Deadly Virus That Almost Killed Me. So what I moved onto was accepting antibiotics. All I can say about that is - God I'm glad I live in the age of modern medicine especially antibiotics and I truly accept them as my personal savior. Amen.

5. True acceptance - Spring is here, the snow has melted, and despite the many recent late-spring frost warnings, I accept that winter is finally OVER! Halle(f***king)lujah!

I believe I will survive! (And maybe even start blogging regularly again.)