6 posts tagged “inspiration”

 We want people to understand everything we say all the time, everytime. But this does not happen, language is a symbol of our thoughts but it is not our thoughts. It is imprecise, which is why we have things called Art, Science, Literature... It is a wonder that any of us can truly understand each other. Which is why, when we have those special moments where there is such a thorough understanding between you and another, we experience such grand epiphanies.

There was a time, when living at home and taking care of your children was not considered demeaning. Why is it that whenever I am asked what I do for a living and answer, people assume I am stupid? Now, this was a general question, obviously not everyone thinks this. Yes, I enjoy doing other types of work (in fact when I was working I was a major workaholic) but to say that child rearing is not a job is demeaning to me and every other mother who has chosen to live this way. Many believe we do not have the choice and that we were trapped to live out our lives without realizing our goals... so they pity us. Most of the women I know who take care of their children chose to sacrifice other wants or needs. Chose to care for their children at the expense of an extra income or to learn other fields.

I keep running into women who say, they will never live like their mother, never give up so much. Whenever I hear this, I feel horribly sad. How many times have I heard someone say their mother was invisible... that she was no one... that she gave up herself... that she became an appendage. How often do I see women going into the work force with the thought that they will never do what their mother did, never give anything for another... It is sad to see so many misunderstand the lessons by example and see only the sacrifice, never the joy.

Some women have been able to live in the workforce and care for their children at the same time, I admire them for it. They juggle the roles of caregiver and money maker admirably and if they occasionally make mistakes, well all I can say is that everyone does so don't feel bad.

Out of all this upheaval in thought and struggling with these perceptions, I wrote poetry filled with the voices of mothers, each from a different perspective. As I did this I found my own mirror, so to speak.

When the pupil outgrows the teacher
(Preamble to Size Matters)

A willing sacrifice to life's altar,
Nurturing the future
To accommodate change.
Growing larger by the month,
By the year.

Forsaking teeth
To give shelter and food,
Putting aside wants
To teach how to give,
Ignoring the need of solitude
To give comfort and support,
Refusing the pain of rheumatism,
Arthritis or osteoporosis
To teach strength.

Then the day comes,
In the stand fight for independence
You decry the poison words,
"I'll never martyr myself like you did!"

She knew this day
From yesterday,
The stance of guilt
Once hers.
So stands erect and
says the words
Her mother
should have said.

Size Matters
(our Mothers Voices)

I

There have been times when
Dreams tripped and made me shudder,
And yearnings insert their hollow
Longings to be more than invisible.

This is depression speaking,
Putting me to sleep,
Depriving me of
You.
It doesn't last long.

II

We are women,
our choices are never easy.
Maybe when we marry
And we take our husband's name,
We accept this responsibility,
Make it our strength.

III

When we have children
We must choose:
Give up;
Give in;
Or get on.

Those who give up on their lives
And live only for their children,
Are like broken quartz,
Giving each fragment away
until they are specks of dust.

Those who give in
Are resentful of all they lost,

Blame you for the choices
They didn't want to make.

You've got to be large
To go on with life.
To keep what you have and grow.
You have to stand
With an open body,
Keep the structure,
open the doors and let the world in.

You have to accept pain, misery,
Death and violence when it comes,
To appreciate silence, joy and love.

IV

It is hard to grow into a Mother.
you make a lot of mistakes
And sometimes you go on a diet,
But a real Mother is always
Strong and growing.
I've lost nothing,
Growing you out of me.

V

In our own quiet way,
The women of our family
Strive to keep our names alive.
Inscribed in every child we bore,
Is the name of one before.
Not the first, whose history's
Forgotten, but in the middle
Have we housed
our maiden names.
 

When I was nineteen, I lived and worked in a small little town in South Carolina. This was a very insulated and backward town and it is not indicative to the whole of South Carolina so I will not name it, nor should one presume that because of the events that happened there that the entire town was this way... only the place where I lived seemed to relfect this attitude. Only a handful of people but it reflected badly upon this town and it shaped my attitudes for such behavior, creating a very rigid prejudice that I lay claim to and admit to without any compunction. If I had not met Father Peter before this happened, I may very well have reacted differently but he taught me something that no-one else has ever shown me and so I now show some of it to you, in the hopes that you will see what havoc, righteous statements can create.

I moved to this town because of a job, I worked on a government backed project for about eighteen months. Not as an engineer, contractor or manager but as a utility person, which is a euphemism for trench digging and housekeeping. Strangely enough, you had to take classes and tests in order to do the job but the pay was more than I have ever made in my life... $6.00 an hour. That may not sound like much to you but it was the best paying job I have ever had and it was enough to make me move nine hundred miles from home. I lived on the wrong side of town, in a little trailer park, and the town division was a bit of grass and the fence in my backyard.

The moment I moved there I knew I was not welcome, I have not felt such animosity before or since. I was more than just an outsider, I was a Yankee alien. The first week I was there, someone shot the windows of my trailer out. After repairing the windows someone threw stones at them and cracked all the back windows. A news bulletin on the radio said a car was stolen and wouldn't you know, the police came to my house to ask for registration, to make sure I was not the thief. Feeling more than a little out of my depth I went looking for a church where I could talk to a priest. I figured that he would at least treat me kindly but then I discovered the town did not have a Catholic Church. They did however have every kind of Baptist and Advent church you could imagine. I walked into one and was inundated with "the devil of my religion..." now I have to say at this point, I no longer held faith with the Catholic religion but the attitude of this congregation was that "if you do not agree with me, you were going to die a grievous death and we would be more than happy to help you get there more quickly."

This not being my cup of tea, I left post haste. Decided that living with my confusion was better than accepting theirs as well. Right about this time the news was broadcasting about a bandit (he had a particular name but it is related to the town so I'm not going to say it). This bandit would sneak into a persons home, take all the valuables and then wait for the person to return home, then he would murder them. Seems this bandit had been doing this for about a year and still could not be found.

While all of this was going on, I was taking my classes and listening to very boring material. There was a young man next to me and he seemed very unsure of himself. I introduced myself and tried to make him feel more comfortable. Found out that he was a local boy and was here because his family really needed the money but he didn't think he would be able to pass the tests.

I decided to take him under my wing and help him out. I brought him home with me at lunch time and tutored him while I fixed us some lunch and made sure he understood the material. We returned to take our tests and he passed with flying colors, he thanked me and then told me that he had tried to take this test three times before and had failed each time. I told him I was glad to help and that was the last time I saw him but the repercussions of my altruism were still to be felt.

I got the job and started digging trenches and cleaning lunch rooms that night, I was the only woman working night shift in a construction zone with about three hundred men from various parts of the South. My work schedule was a twelve hour shift, every twenty-three days I would get two days off, anything over sixty hours would be time in a half and I would get a paycheck every two weeks.

When I came home from my first shift, my landlord was sitting on the front steps of my trailer. The first words out of his mouth where "Niggers are not allowed around here" and then he said that "Whoring is not permitted here because this is a God Fearing Place".

I looked at my grimy clothes took the hard hat off my head and asked him what he was talking about. He said that the KKK was still very active in this region of the world and that he did not want his trailer park "tainted" with the likes of me. I kept my calm and asked him what the likes of me where. "Ladies do not stay out all hours of the night and I would not want people to think I allow such behavior." I rolled my eyes and told him that I had been working the night shift and turned in a circle so he could see all the filth. Then I told him that although I may be spending my nights with many men and getting paid for my work I was not "indulging" in extra curricular activities.

Mollified in that respect he started to walk away but then I asked him to explain his other remark. He turned to me, looking startled by the question then he non-nonchalantly said, "crosses still get burned around here, I've even helped on a few occasions and I really don't want my trailer destroyed because of the people you invite to your house." It took me a few minutes to realize he was speaking of the young man I had helped the day before. I was in shock at what I heard and so I said the first thing that came into my head. "If any crosses are going to be burned at this trailer, you might as well do it now, cause I will invite whoever I want to my home and if you really want to let it be known that you have such a nasty person as me here, then you might as well tell them that I am a Catholic too. That way you can feel really righteous!" Then I went into my little trailer and stormed around till I fell asleep.

There after, twice a week my neighbors would try to get me to go to one of their prayer meetings. I worked and ignored the nasty remarks the men made about me and the not so covert comments about joining them for little trysts. In time they started to treat me with respect as I proved to them that a woman could indeed pick up heavy material, even if it only "the trash" and that hard labor is not just an aspect of the male way of life. These men did not even know that my work was hard until I played stupid one day and pretended to be weaker than I was just to prove a point.

After three months of working night shift, I come home one day, to find one of my windows open... I close it and think nothing of it as I don't have anything in the trailer worth stealing and went to bed. mmmmm... at this point I guess I should describe the trailer... it was the last trailer in the park, two bedrooms a bathroom, living room and kitchen.

That evening before work, the news reports that the bandit had struck again, killing a family of four. My neighbors accost me and try to tell me of the excitement of "Speaking in Voices" and I should go to this particular Church rather than any other...

A week later, after convincing another neighbor that I really had no passion to hold a poisonous snake in yet another church, I went inside my house to find the same window open again. I go outside to where the window is open and find a bunch of bricks set up like steps, so I remove them, go back inside and close the window.

About this time, I find out that a dear Aunt had died and the funeral had already occurred. It is Sunday and I feel the need to walk, so I go outside to see men standing around, pistols and rifles in their arms. They follow me around as I walk about... there is nothing in the world quite like the feeling of a being stalked by a group of men with guns. I screwed up my courage, turned around and walked towards them, looked them in the eyes and continued on... One of the men said, "be careful who you choose as friends girl, wouldn't want you to get hurt..."

Returning to my trailer, I see a bunch of men in suits, examining my car and walking around my place... I enter my trailer, fix some lunch and watch them prod my car and scratch the tires. Just when I am about to invite them into the house for some lunch and give them the chance to inspect the inside of the place... another car comes, parks next to mine and the men converge around it to talk. Less than a minute later, they are gone.

Ten minutes later my neighbors are knocking at my door to tell me that the "men" were asking questions about me. "You know how suspicious your actions are every day girl? You never go to church, out late every night, inviting niggers to your house. You can't do things like that around here, ya have to toe the line, be more of a lady." I thank them for their concern and then go to bed.

Three more months go by, occasionally I find the window open, I remove more brick blocks, call the police and landlord about it. Tactfully say no to the newest Advent, Methodist, Zion or Baptist church I should go to and Work my job. The pressure continues unabated, the days off decrease to once every thirty four days and the hours increase to sixteen. The Bandit strikes the town again... this time it is a prominent family.

The hounds are brought out and they begin their hunt... which takes them straight to my trailer. Six teams start from different places and all the hounds end up at my trailer. They all congregate around the window in the back... the one that I kept closing.

I come home from work to the braying sounds and all my neighbors, watching my approach. I knew about the hounds, everyone did and I was shocked to find them at my trailer. Just as I was approaching, the hounds suddenly went crazy and then, they were off. They caught the bandit that day. On the news, I found out a week later, that the bandit had been using my place, while I worked, as his little hidey hole.

The only reason, my neighbors told me, that I was not arrested is because I had been calling the police every time the window was found open. My Landlord however, never confirmed the fact that I had apprised him as well.

I left that week.

What does this have to do with anything? My Landlord's Self Righteous attitude could very well have killed me or put me in jail. He thought he was doing such a little thing by ignoring my "window" problem. That I was "evil" because I was not a "proper Christian" that I was not a "lady" because I worked night-shift with a bunch of men and because I let "colored folk" into my house. He never saw his blindness because he was too busy speaking his own brand of gospel.

 

Father Peter was a wonderful man, he lived in New York City and came to my town on weekends to give Saturday evening and Sunday morning service to his congregation. He grew up in Ethopia and was the kindest, gentlest soul I have ever known in my life.

One day, he received a letter from his family telling him that his mother was dying. He went to his superior to ask for permission to see her. He was told to attend his flock. A few weeks later, he received another missive, telling him that his mother was picked up by the Patrols and that she was going to be executed as a health risk.

Once again, he went to his superiors and once again, they declined him. So he waited for the letter saying that she was dead, instead he received another note telling him that the village was being loaded up for execution. He went to his superiors and was declined permission to go but at this point he had had it.

Ignoring his superiors, he packed his handful of possessions and left for Ethopia. As he crossed the border, he was captured and tortured, his hands and feet became blisters of pain. Somehow, he managed to escape and continue his journey. He found the villagers and his Mother, helped them to escape and brought them to a safe haven. He stayed with his mother until she died, (she had cancer). Then he started his walk back to his congregation. Once again he was captured and tortured but this time he could not escape, he spent over nine months there before he was finally rescued. Almost all of his bones had been broken and he body was just a figment of what it used to be but he still retained the gentleness of soul that made him so special.

When he returned to New York, it was to find that his apartment had been vandalised and his bed was destroyed. He never spoke a harsh word, simply laid a blanket on the floor and fell asleep. He returned to his Congregation and spoke this story to only a handful of people and except for his looks, you would never have known that he had been through such an ordeal.

I never heard one unkind word from him about his mistreatment nor of his agony. He had only the kindest of words in regards to his superiors. He died three months later by the hands of a mugger and I am sure that he forgave that mugger for the act.

He could have so easily turned to bitterness or preached sermons of anger but he never did. Not once did he promote his own thinking as the interpretation of the law. Would you believe he apologized to his superiors for breaking faith with his congregation and the church? Not once did he apologize for his actions though, because when all was said and done, no one else was responsible for them but himself.