Tag: writing

Humanity

Because of Cynthia Lee

Lovelovemotherexpletive

I’m here, I’m writing.

I’ve got a new job.

I’m an inclusion special education teacher in an elementary school. its not something I’ve ever done before and the learning curve is steep and constant. I’m weaning myself off of panic and into resignation, slowly. I will figure it out, I will, even if it gets bumpy along the way. And I’m getting paid in a way that still makes me cry when I get a paycheck, because maybe, just maybe, I’ll make it.

I work with a lot of people for the second year in a row. If you read this, and then see me? … goddammit, don’t tell me about it. I get all wigged out in a very weird, flattered but scared sort of way. like, its a lot of pressure to have people that you walk by in a hallway talk about something you wrote, or last year, even heard a tale about a deep dive into the blog. which is terrifying, because ‘what the hell did i write?!’ and gaaaah.

and on the other hand, I love it. I do. Because I am now, still, in a job where it is easy to be unknown. Before schools, I was working in a high tunnel with a thousand chickens, or a hundred spinach plants. They never really made me nervous about how I was seen, or how my thoughts were received. And now there are so many people and my clothes are weird, my inner dialogue is definitely off-center, and I don’t know at all how to be authentic and still keep my job and that self-off-centeredness. (not selfish, or self-absorbed, but self-centered in the midst of a crazy whirlpool of things. It is a wonderful and normal thing to want to be seen for who you actually are. Right?

RIGHT?

my two eldest kids are not here. they are off in their lives, and the shift in identity is fierce and with me all the time. what am I, if mom is not the title I hear most? the remaining child, my lovely thirteen year old, is adjusting to life as an almost-only child. the grocery list and I are sudden enemies, as the size and portion of things makes for too many leftovers and I don’t know how to handle it. And while I appreciate the wild cut to my grocery bill quite a bit, it makes me want to cry on the regular.

these are the things. and i read my friend cynthia lee over at substack and she just forced herself to sit down, and so here i am, forcing myself to sit down and write it.

its Sunday, my takeclasses and teachmyselfeverything school day, so the laptop is in my lap anyhow. and its been too long. I’m still writing in my head all the time, so why not clear some space in there, and make it a tangible thing?

although, is it tangible if there is no physical thing? meh. no, i don’t know.

I do love you, in general, and specifically. Take care. Put on another sweater maybe, and I’ll be forcing myself to sit down here again soon.

Green sneaker on a blue and white rug
In my room. My work room.

Humanity

July’s end

Lovelovemotherexpletive

I’ve been reading a lot. I’m waiting for the patches to dry and then I’m repainting the walls in the kitchen. I’m beginning week two of my daughter being at summer camp and I’m officially over it. My 18-year-old has been working every day and then evenings with his dad as they over there are preparing to move into a new house. lovely man bob is down with another heart thing (not open-heart surgery again so that is excellent) and i’m just done with all of it.

ALL OF IT.

i’m dreaming about escape to a waterfront cabin in far north maine, where I will spend my winters with nothing but books and a fireplace. fuck it all. let me nurse the wounds of leaving motherhood all by myself. maybe some bread, cheese, a weekly beer and a television that only works once a week. No need for a plow because I have nowhere to go.

the last time I was this fixated on escape, I was married with young children and had no company. that, I still understand. this time around? I don’t really understand it as much. I mean, I have a life, friends, man, job, and a great ability to find all the shimmer and joy that there is.

Now? it is loss, so much change of an internal, self-identity sort that I cannot process it all. My middle E, 18, was singing and playing the guitar on my sofa and singing, still in his lifeguard uniform, and I shoved him out when he was done because I was about to sob in his face. I’ve spent a lot of time pretending I’m fine. It’s fine. It’s fine.

I’ve started writing for myself again, journaling if you will, but what I keep circling back to is the need for me to reforge myself. I’ve been burnt already and now, since I am currently in a melted pool on the porch, it should be a straightforward process?

How do I make myself into the main character?

I was a good daughter, good grandchild, decent-enough wife (though clearly, not ACTUALLY enough), and then a mom, and in all those relationships, I was in service, or that is how it feels. and so now, when I am no longer approaching things like that, no longer serving others… I become an entirely different being.

I mean, don’t I? Do I?

more to come, more to come.

-lovelove

Humanity

its getting hot in here.

Lovelovemotherexpletive

once i gave my kid a card with that song playing. i didn’t really think it through. if you don’t know what i mean, that’s ok.

there’s a heat wave going on. I’m sitting on a velvet couch sprawled in a very unladylike fashion. we have no whole-house AC. and the upstairs, where it is, has started to blow a fuse every hour or so, which canna be good. I’m unplugging everything up there to see if i can make it work, but it’s one window ac for three bedrooms, so it’s the curse of an old house. I’m guessing.

boardwalk between tall grass
Photo by Ghost Acolyte on Pexels.com

I’m going to go to the beach in the next couple of hours. water. must have immersion. I know how lucky I am, yes. And two of my three kids are already there, and that feels like coming home a little.

It’s almost the fourth here in the U.S. We celebrate with cookouts and explosions. and a lot of alcohol for a lot of people who drive. a lovely friend of mine has explosions in her backyard, and so it feels like the most personal delightful exhibition. like, i’m MVP at a World’s Fair somewhere, back when that was just the bee’s knees.

I start a new job this coming Tuesday, and I’m sweating it, and also, know it’ll be fine. its a little bit of a first, but also not at all, so it’s complicated. sort of. I just want it to start, so i can stop planning. I’m spiraling a little bit with all the time on my hands. I’ve laminated, I’ve cut, I’ve packaged. It’s all good, we’re good. Its only a fifteen day program, though spread out over five weeks. And the buckos are preschoolers and kindergarteners. I mean, come on. This is my field that I’m working in, after all. (and funnily enough, i was making a farm metaphor, but it fell flat because of words. ) My soil I am turning?

words man.

i’m trying to write more. I’m hoping the summer will spark me up again. although this heat? not sparky.

(and I’m not typing “fireworks” shhhh, because my dog will be hysterical for several nights in a row, and I don’t want him to start early. He’s a hundred pounds and tries to be a lapdog this whole week. did i say anything about the heat? doghair clings…)

Plus, explosions are way more fun to think about.

right? get sparky with it.

have a fun and safely explosive time.

love, love,

me.

Humanity

New Year, now 2026

Lovelovemotherexpletive

I did finish Cannery Row. I loved it, the detached but clear, the emotions laid out, no therapy needed.. the gathering of characters, the drinking without emotional recoil, the raucous life. and honestly, the history, the ways in which a cannery town feels like a mining town, a logging camp, and oilman’s camp. All the characters in a mix with the greatest emotional turmoil being loneliness. Ah. Somehow all so lovely, ending up lovely with a sweet bit of poetry included:

Even now,
I know that I have savored the hot taste of life
Lifting green cups and gold at the great feast.
Just for a small and a forgotten time
I have had full in my eyes from off my girl
The whitest pouring of eternal light-

-on the last page of Cannery Row, lest you think I wrote it myself, because no.

I went to the first hockey game of my life and loved it. It was a regional high school team which includes friends of my kids, and siblings etc. AND they won dramatically and fantastically in an amazing match up. And because I am a goalie mom I watched and whispered strength to the goalie who had an astonishing number of saves. What more is there than that? That the percentage of saves is what really matters in life, and we all tend to forget that in our rush for ambitions and progress and ‘wins’.

My percentage of saves is high, my friends. and I’m really damn lucky. and hallelujah, January is here, and my body feels better and its over, for another year, this holiday fuckery. Made it through. I guess we all did, who are reading here. So there is that. And I love you, and I’ll see you.

_kate

My final slip of paper, my duty for the year is to make this true:

I can do it. I’m halfway there already.

Humanity

Hello Zucchini. POW! BANG!!

Lovelovemotherexpletive

HELLO…

Adele and Lionel Ritchie. PeW! PeW! I feel them both, simultaneously.

Me, straddling the eras. eras, eons, you pick. I have been quiet. The house is currently in a lull, a small space in the summer speedby, I am feeling like a hello again is in order. Here are some things:

GEEWHIZ! I feel so young on the inside. Very young, so much younger than the young ones around me. Maybe it’s the humility I carry, or the sparks of joy that I seek and find that I juggle in my heart. So young. 51 years I’ve lived. There’s much more certainty than there used to be, and much more shrug.

DANGIT! I’m doing two jobs this summer, and one of them is in a class of kids that need one-on-one attention from an adult in order to ‘assimiliate’. They are straight up otherworldly, in some cases, and there is so much to say about this, and I’m not done yet, one week left, and I need time to process. BUT BOY, let me tell you, I know a lot more about what my boundaries are in terms of what sorts of classrooms I want to work in. It’s good to know your boundaries, without trauma forcing you into them. so says I. (Although, truth be told, our first day together was a little traumatizing for all of us. An extra adult was sent in for day two, let it suffice to say.)

GOLLY! I feel healthy and strong and most of this is because today the heat has retreated a little bit, and I can breathe and there is life in my limbs. And because I’ve got a whole afternoon and evening off from working anywhere. Six days a week is too much, it does not allow for thinking or writing and even the reading that i can squeeze is just an excuse to dull my brain and strain my eyes into prep for sleep.

FUCKSAKE! My own garden is a disaster, but the work farm is an explosion of produce and there is a lot of juggling going on with the zucchini over there. Cabbages, zucchini and the summer squash. good god. oh my god the eggs. so many thousands of eggs. please let us pray to the gods of quiche for release. temporary though it may be, let the frittatas be done.

i’m listening to the audiobook of 1961’s Stranger in a Strange Land. I think audio is best for this one, the reader has such a lovely monotone for the Man from Mars. Its a science fiction, about a human raised on Mars, who returns to Earth, upsetting many of the norms of the time. quite anti-church, quite free lovin’. I’m enjoying. We’ll see where it ends up.

I’d love to start writing again. Oh boy, would I. I’d also love to see my words above my head, like POW! SHAZAM!! FUCKYOU! but only because my current classroom is too young to read.

you know?

lovelove,

me.

zucchini
Photo by Ellie Burgin on Pexels.com