Tag: Family

Christmas Photo Prompt

Published on by annwjwhite14 Comments

Thursday photo prompt – Christmas Present – #writephoto

The shine of a Christmas tree in the boughs decorated with shiny balls and silvery lights lit the child’s face as nothing had done before. Chilly temperatures in the house made seeing a tree inside a logical thing, as the child had just learned cold. One year of age and just twenty days more and all of the learning that had occurred until that day melded together to make Christmas a mystical experience. The cautionary voices of mother and grandmother as they mentioned that she should look, but not touch, gave the child the first knowledge of something precious that couldn’t be grasped. Christmas would be a fleeting moment in her development. As soon as the mystery was grasped, it was also gone. Two weeks in the eyes of a child, and Christmas would be a compounding memory each year. The grandmother’s tree, decorated with family ornaments from 21 years of marriage, filled with family history and time would sit in the child’s eyes out of focus and just out of reach but remembered distantly. A message about a baby. About animals. That was my first Christmas.

Two years later, another child came to learn of the mystery of Christmas. Another one year old, and a little more, stood beneath the tree decorated with sugar cookies because the young couple was making do with what they had. Now there were three children, and a young couple trying to be independent and having none of the money for extras. The sounds of carols from a record player filled the air, and the youngest toddler heard the admonition that he should look but not touch. The cookies hung so temptingly. So he stood with his hands behind his back and bit off all of the feet as mother made a dinner and father went out to seek a Christmas present with only ten dollars in his pocket. He sought it at a hardware store, and finding something he remembered from his Christmas’s long past, a sled with bright red runners. The cost, too great, but he looked at it longingly. The spirit of Christmas filling his eyes, and seen by a salesman, was suddenly his as the man gave him the sled for seven dollars instead of twenty. He would play in the snow with his wife and children, pulling the sled down snow covered sidewalks. All of them young and happy in the moment, then it was gone. But the sled remained for many years, a testament to the spirit of sharing.

Another year, and baby three arrived. Christmas in the blue eyes at only four months of age, now living with Grandmother and Granddad as the world changed. Korea was over, Vietnam was foretold in the news. But in the home, with it’s generations, life was safe and beautiful. This year the cookies hung above the little boys head, just out of reach, except when the oldest would lower the branches just so, entertaining himself and his brother. The toys the children received gratefully disappearing into memory, a doll, a truck, a book or two, all to be well loved and used.

Another year, and the house stood on the banks of the Mississippi, and the newest edition to the family being a parakeet who flew into the open window that summer and stayed for over ten years. Uncle Ned liked the tree and the lights. This year cookies came from a Swedish bakery and were placed in a clear jar only to be opened by the mother and father. Large cookies tasting of peanut butter, sugar, chocolate chips and the mother’s oatmeal raisin cookies tempting good behavior and giving instant reinforcement when that behavior was given with ungrudging enthusiasm. It was the first tree that was in focus for me. I had received my glasses that summer. It is the first tree I remember, the clarity of vision adding mysticism to the experience. This Christmas too was fleeting. But I was now old enough to know that there would be more.

The next Christmas in another grandparent’s house, for my Grandmama needed help from my parents in managing all of the daily tasks. The room was dark, but lit by the tree. Mom never had enough time to do all of the things she needed to do. Now she was no longer working forty hours a week, instead she was making all of our clothes, cooking and baking all of the meals, cleaning the house, playing with us, reading with us, showing her competence but feeling graded at every moment.

I missed a memory the next year. The only thing I remember is singing a hymn about Jesus and the animals. “Jesus our brother kind and good, was humbly born in a stable rude and the friendly beasts around him stood.” I sang that song until June. Over and over, my poor mother must have been driven nuts by it. I started school the next year at 4 1/2. I now think that my mother must have sent me early so that she could have a break. With four babies in under five years, her hands were full and she never complained or rejected us. She did need her own place to be totally happy and that happened as we started school.

The year after, we moved into our own house a few blocks away. Those years are filled with the memory of my brother making my father laugh as he pretended to be a goat head butting him in the knees. The trees got taller. We accumulated shiny balls and figures of ancient Santas, tinsel carefully cherished from year to year. My mother made incredible ornaments from egg cartons. She made tall angels to sing in a choir out of bottles and styrofoam balls, gold paint and old sheets. There was nothing cheap about the way they looked, gleaming as they did on the one book case we owned. She made a sled out of cardboard boxes to hold presents and keep them tidy and the tree safe. We were given an apple and an orange each Christmas by Santa once our stockings were big enough to hold them. There was always a candy cane. And Robert Shaw and Harry Simone came to symbolize the way Christmas should be sung about. One year, four stockings arrived from my Aunt Diana, and pajamas the next, a start of new traditions. We went to the Swedish Institute and learned of the tale of St. Lucia. Red candle holders turned up sometime in the first few years. Ribbons hung from the curtains, in gold and green combinations and splendar.

Mom did most of the work getting ready. Dad would put the lights on the tree and we would decorate. Dad would work. He made ice for the skating rinks, leaving in the early morning to put new ice on the rinks for Christmas. Then skates arrived one year, left over from other children who no longer fit them, Dad brought them home and we learned to skate. Granddad came to skate with us. I skated on my bottom more than my feet, eventually switching to rubber boots so I could stay up. It took me years to learn. So many Christmases. We lost my grandmothers early, and missed them each year.

My mother would make clothes and toys for us by hand. She would make new clothes for the dolls that my sister and I owned. And when I discovered that she was the spirit of Mrs. Santa, she enlisted my help. She and my older brother made me a doll house from a cardboard box that looked so real and was the dream I had thought I would never receive. My mother was Christmas. For us, Christmas was the moment when we could all be happy, safe, and full of joy. We were a lot like the Whos down in Whoville. Somewhere in the early years in the green house, we became recipients of gifts from the VFW. That had been a tight year, and we were invited to a Children’s Show. Every child there received a gift by name from Santa. I wonder now if it hadn’t been part of the Marine Corps Toys for Tots program. No matter, the VFW make Christmas real. My older brother got a lock which had a gun hidden inside it that worked with caps. My baby brother got a gum ball machine, which was also a savings bank. We helped him eat all of the gum balls, only to feel chagrin later in life for having done so. My sister and I got dolls, although I don’t remember any more. I remember sitting in that room feeling special and valued. We didn’t feel like poor church mice even when money was so very tight. Then there was the Christmas that the stockings hung empty, and my father said we had not been good, Santa hadn’t come. Oh the tears welled up in our eyes, and just before we all cried boohoo, gifts were discovered, too large to fit in the stockings. Oh such joy. We had been good, as good as normal children could be. I had a stove and refrigerator that I loved until I went to College and played with constantly with my dolls. It was just the right size.

And I grew, lean and uncoordinated, very slowly, but woke up one day knowing that the time of family celebrations being over was coming soon, and not wanting them to go. But they did. I went to college and learned more of the music of the season, carefully taught by teachers who believed that the music was more than for enchanting children. I learned of nuns, and sacrifices, and brought home that knowledge for two weeks of trees and changing brothers and sisters.

Then I was gone, living on the west coast, and rejoining once more a Christmas at my Granddad’s home, which fleetingly sped past as only two days was allowed for my visit. I was gone again, this time to the East Coast where Christmas became the time I was to be married. The ceremony held in Minneapolis, just a few days after Christmas, so full of family and time that I could barely grab the holiday. I remember that it was cold, -5 degrees in the morning, and then warm 45 degrees by noon. The wedding hung over the holiday and mixed the two so in my mind that I have never been able to separate them.

After that, I had my own children. Two years apart they acted like twins by the time the boy was four and the girl was two. We had trees and presents and travelled from one family to the next for family dinners. We now had three family dinners, one with my husband’s grandparents, one with my parents and one with my Aunt Diana and Uncle Herb. The first four years were as rough for us as had been for my parents. Poor in cash but rich in grownups who realized I had bitten off more than I could chew. They provided me with stability and the knowledge that life would provide us with enough speed bumps as to make it interesting. My focus at Christmas became the tree. I could never equal what my mother had done for us, although I tried. I baked gingerbread cookies for the tree, but no one nibbled on the feet. I had learned the tale of my brother and took precautions. Each year we added ornaments that we made, candy canes made of shiny plastic beads carefully sequenced in patterns. We made bread dough ornaments. We colored paper chains and threaded cranberries and popcorn. I made some dresses for my daughter but was nothing like my mother whose clothes had turned out perfectly. I worked. I, like my mother, had gone back to school when my kids reached an age where they could understand that I needed to do homework. They were in second grade and kindergarden. My poor mother had had to wait until we were in high school. Somehow she had managed all of the decorating, shopping, baking, cooking, and never missed a step. Me, I stumbled all over the place, but my heart was in the right place even if my skills weren’t.

My father died when my son was 14, and my daughter ll 3/4. It was 1995, and I remember insisting that mom come down and stay with us. I was teaching by then. She filled the day with joy, even though her heart was broken. In the years that followed, she began packing up Christmas and moving it to a place further away in her closet. It wasn’t the same without my dad. It wasn’t the same for me either. He had taken such joy in what my mother had created for Christmas, and that joy must have been the reason she continued to be so creative for so many years.

One winter my family from Minnesota came to Virginia for the holiday. My older brother, my little sister, her husband and two children, my younger brother and my mom all fit into our house in one fell swoop. We went to Mount Vernon and Williamsburg. I was informed that I was the favorite aunt because my lap was cushy by one of my nieces.We had the tree and a feast. It felt like the old days in the green house for me. I gave my little brother a ha’ penny, but he missed the symbolism. It didn’t matter, I got the message. I wanted my family to know that they were loved. Mom took photographs, as mom always does.

Then my children grew. In 1998 the first MS attack that we can document with a certainty occurred and I slowed down. I couldn’t do the things I loved to do. My children stepped up and helped with the tree becoming more and more competent each time. Popcorn and Cranberries were no longer on the tree. Mom donated some of her ornaments and the cats took the tree out that year, as cats are wont to do. They broke and it made me sad, but still the tree was reassembled and the holiday went okay. After that, my kids were grown and mom started going out to Minnesota for the holidays. We each got her for two or three days, but the season seemed fragmented without her.

One Christmas Eve, we had finished the tree that night, my husband having to work, and the kids had a surprise for me. We had been married 24 years, and that evening my husband brought me an engagement ring. I guess he figured out he wanted me to hang around. Time sped up.

When my son returned from the Navy, he brought a wife. She had troubles, but her children were sweet. We had a tree and took the kids to all of the places children should go when they visit a grandparent. It was only for that one Christmas, but we were exhausted at the end. I lost ten pounds that holiday. It was a nice perk.

One year, we had a Charlie Brown tree that the kids found and took the bottom branch of the tree in the back year from. They wrapped a blue sheet around the bottom and it had two ornaments, one from Charlie Brown that we had had, and a new Charlie Brown ornament from my dear friend Ana.

The next Christmas and those following found my family working to keep the holidays of Halloween and Christmas according to tradition. Until present day, we struggled along as best we could. But this Christmas arrived on my birthday with all of the bells and whistles and I feel that joy that I must have felt when I was one and the tree was lit with magic. This Christmas coming in a week will be our best. My husband took a week off. We plan to go to an arboretum to see lights. The tree is up and I made handmade ornaments to add to the collection. My daughter-in-law will be staying for the holiday. My son has taken a few days off work. And the cooperation between my two children is something new and something I wanted to see. My son-in-law has been putting up with all of this Christmas stuff for me, even though he doesn’t like the holiday. My father-in-law will be here. There is a new baby due in the family soon, my niece is expecting her first any day now.

There is a dark part to this Christmas, one I don’t generally talk about and try not to let it take over my holiday. I’m not sure how many more times I will have to celebrate the holiday. My father’s side of the family dies at about 65 and that is 6 years away. I know, I shouldn’t dwell on such a thing and I should take one day at a time and be glad for the times I have. But really, 65 is way to young to die. I’ve just figured out how to play the game here. It’s all gone by so fast. It’s the hospital stay that brought this on. But I will blink and block these darker thoughts for now. I’ve got what I wanted most for Christmas. I have a family. I wish mom could be here but she’s jet setting around the world as she likes to do. She’ll stay long enough to make sure that things are still Christmas and move to the next sibling. I’ll have her back soon enough. I know, I have a book for her present and she is a bibliophile. She can’t resist a book. Neither can I.

I’m off to watch Christmas shows and create some presents from “Stuff” I have lying around that needs to be created with. I want to leave something beautiful for each of my family to glow for many more years.

Merry Christmas, happy holidays…remember the light.

 

Martyr: A Dailypost Writing Prompt

Published on by annwjwhite5 Comments 
Better had you called her Mother,
For mother she was before you stole
Her every waking moment with your needs.
She never minded the change that goes with:

I need water, cookies, a story.
I need soothing, aspirin, a cold pack.
I have a broken dolly, truck, fix it, 
Someone hurt me, pushed me, my knee...

My broken heart, my bank balance.
My lost friend, my best friend gone,
I'm alone. You were never alone, not you.
She hovered over you even when you refused to see.

Still she held you and gave you worth, forgiveness.
Counsel given you, and some of hers from a lengthy speech
You remember. You lust for more, but lack the patience
Of saints from world's dust covered and ash filled.

Mother finds a way, always she finds a way.
My friends have, my sister has, my brother took.
Return it, all of it to her, give her the life
That she thought she would have, but you changed.

She gave her all away, every drop: tears, smiles, cries.
Still she sets the table, waiting for a call, a note.
Cooks for your empty spot, carefully decorated table,
Leaves a napkin to blot your lips or brow, a post card.

Folded on the table, she keeps her dreams for you,
The funds she gathered in pennies, for ice cream, notebooks...
She gave you her dreamscapes to bear with you,
Lush beautiful realms of the mind. Freedom.

In place of your sorrow, a breeze for gladness.
She healed you, scolded you, taught you,
Worked to learn the math both new and old,
So you could explain the new world to her. 

Mother, better had you called her Mother, 
Before she was labeled Martyr, as willingly
You took away her smiles of you, to leave her
Eyes in tears and heart in two.

https://dailypost.wordpress.com/prompts/martyr/

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Birthday! Geburtstag!

Published on by annwjwhite6 Comments

Yesterday was my fifty-ninth birthday. It was also my happiest birthday, besides being born (thanks MOM).

My children decided that the best way to celebrate my birthday was to spend it with me. What mother could resist that? They have such busy adult lives that normally we have a brief conversation over the phone, a sandwich brought by so I don’t have to cook, or a pat on my head. Their lives are so busy that in past years they haven’t had time to affirm that I was getting grayer, or whiter, or that time was ticking past at a tremendous pace. But this year we had the hospital scare which mobilized both of my dears to become more involved in my life again. It was a lovely outcome to a scary time.

My day yesterday started with a breakfast wakeup call. My daughter and her husband had arrived with pancakes, eggs, hash browns, biscuits and bacon. They set the table and giving a cheer to bring us down the stairs, presented me with this feast. It took another call up the stairs to bring my husband down. My daughter used the “Dad, he’s poking me again” line which has become a family joke. My son came in and announced that his sister has surprised even him with the early morning roll call. He encouraged us all to eat and then to dress warmly because the day had just begun.

“Just begun?” Could it be that the day was just beginning? Normally weekends are days spent cleaning house, grocery shopping, and organizing for the next week. Taking time away from those things was unusual. Did they mean a game day? We have days when we invade each other’s territory to spend the day with unusual games that call out to us to play them. My son in law Chris was the one to encourage days like that, but this time, it was not what was intended.

I was ushered into the car, and we sped off after my daughter and Chris, at a respectable 35 miles an hour, strictly following the speed limit. There is a vendor of trees, each Christmas season, at the end of our neighborhood behind the Wawa convenience store and overlooking Neabsco Creek. Every year we wander to the vendor a day or two before Christmas and pick a tree that we hope will last into January. This year we were suddenly ahead of schedule. My son had given us a new TV for Christmas this year at Thanksgiving. Now the two kids had delivered a tree, an eight foot all Frazier Fir, and let me pick it out. We were twenty days ahead of schedule. Maybe, as Merlin thought in White’s A Once and Future King, we were moving backwards in time. No, we were moving forwards. The tree was placed in Chris’s truck as Derek opened his wallet exposing the tree fund to light and U.S. currency and homeward we went.

At this moment, door number two opened. Yes, we got the contents of door number one and two at the same time. Derek began pulling out the lights, not just for the tree, but for the entire house. Since he moved home, there has been a sense of normalization that he’s brought. Halloweens must be celebrated with decorations, and so too with Christmases. But as he set out to do the lights, Chris and my husband Eric set the tree into water, and Genevieve ushered me inside.

We always spend Christmas eve cleaning the family room of a year’s worth of crafting and lack of energy on my part by cleaning and getting the area ready for a tree. It can be a daunting task. Once we lacked the funds for a tree, and my kids went out into the backyard and brought back a bough from a white pine, with the perfect curl to it that would have fit in Jack Skeleton’s setting or Charlie Brown’s Christmas. They wrapped the bottom of the tree with a blue Linus blanket, and set one ornament on the tree at the pointy end of the only branch the tree had. Our dear friend Ana arrived on Christmas Day and added one additional ornament to the tree, a Charlie Brown Christmas ornament celebrating the simplicity of the season which is often overwhelming for me. Another time, the cleaning was finished at midnight, and the tree remained undecorated, but well loved. Christmas always arrived expected, but never quite prepared for, just like babies.

So I was convinced that my duty was to let people help me. Chris, Eric, Genevieve and I sorted, moved furniture, ran up and down stairs (I only handed things that needed to be relocated) and we achieved a new landmark. We had a clean tidy organized Christmas room early. We also had a ficus in the corner that now bears handmade ornaments that look like the ones that Grandma Boonie had on her tree. (Just a sign perhaps, but this Thanksgiving Genevieve, my mother, Laura and I created the ornaments to help us celebrate her life. My mother had also created ornaments using the same techniques that had decorated my parent’s trees. We never lacked for a love of Christmas, even when there was no money to be found.) So we used the ornaments we had made at Thanksgiving to decorate the ficus.

Off went Genevieve, Chris and Eric they soon had the tree in the stand. Derek and Eric brought the tree in the house lifting it over all of the things that hop out into the way when you want to transport something, successfully missing all of the obstacles, and the tree was placed along the west wall of the family room. Then began a call for directions to straighten the tree, which was amazingly close this year to true from the beginning, and we ran a relay of water so that the tree wouldn’t dry out.

Then we fell over, and Derek arrived with the ingredients for fancy grilled cheese sandwiches and tomato soup. He had four types of cheese, including the American cheese that I get teased for my infatuation with, two types of sausages to be sliced and added to the cheese and Campbell’s Tomato soup. He whipped up dinner for us all, taking orders like the short order line cook at a good deli. By this time we had listened to Hamilton, the original soundtrack, Christmas swing music by the Glen Miller Orchestra, and we were ready for something to go with a quick meal. So out came The Grinch, which has my father in law in it, just check the section of the first singalong where the Who wearing the glasses and the trimmed beard is shown, followed by Charlie Brown’s Christmas. That gave us enough to time recover our blood sugar levels and the lights arrived for the tree.

Genevieve has taken over that job. Her dad used to do it, but with his schedule giving him less time to do it in, he had to pass that tradition on. Derek has done it several times, but he was still finishing the outside of the house. We run a string or two of lights up the middle of the tree, generally using the largest bulbs we can find, and cabling several light strings together until we have fully lighted strings to use. Then we swirl small lights around the tree. Each year we put together the leftovers of the years before until we arrive at the tree lights we think of as perfection. The pineapple ornament, the symbol of hospitality, goes on the very top, and this year has two 9 inch ornamental angels in full gold and white dress, holding candles (fake candles, the ones using electricity) are directly underneath the pineapple. It almost looks like the beginning of an angelic chorus. As we added ornaments, the tree opened up beautifully. I decorate the inside of the tree as much as the outside. It’s always amazing to me how many ornaments a tree can hold.

We put in twelve hours of getting ready for Christmas on my birthday. It’s not many people who can say they have been given Christmas as a birthday present, but I can say that. I was exhausted but really happy by evening. When my daughter and Chris had left for home, and Derek had gone to get ready for bed, Eric and I sat and watched the tree. He remarked that we “have some great kids”, and I added “and they are remarkable adults.” He asked if I was happy and I am. I’m also really proud that they recognize that time with them is the most important gift I could have been given. Christmas as a present gave them a way to show how much they cared and let us share a lot of memories. And, it’s not even Christmas yet.

Dailypost Challenge: Anticipation

Published on by annwjwhite2 Comments

https://dailypost.wordpress.com/prompts/anticipation/

While much of the world talks about gratitude, we in the U.S. find ourselves dealing with “anticipation” as the world shakes and turns around us. What’s going to happen in our future? Where will the next shoe drop? What happens if so and so does such and such? And then the political elbows appear to dog us back into our perimeters of uncertainty and our place at the bottom of the totem. Personally, I am tired of elbows being thrown to show who is the authoritarian expert on life itself and am ready to start throwing my elbows around. However that would be tiresome, and tiresome isn’t who I am.

I’d like to anticipate a broad future for us all, but I just don’t have it in me today. So I’ll simplify the anticipation of what I’m anticipating to what it means personally and shake out my brain’s rafters a bit.

We will survive to retire. We weren’t sure of this before, but as we get closer, well, the anticipation is thick with us. (Sorry Yoda.)

  1. Despite all of the efforts to throw issues between the two of us, my husband and I, we still stand together. I anticipate this to continue, after all, money won’t always be this tight, will it?
  2. Medical issues will be part of the future, but I think we can handle them. I have good doctors that are willing to work with me as my life becomes more complicated. I’m also willing, and have made arrangements, to donate my body to science so that more can be learned about MS, Type 2 Diabetes, and my other issues. I anticipate medical science will continue to improve our lives. I have to believe that the catch phrase of “there is a cure down the line” will eventually mean there is a cure down the line.
  3. I anticipate that my husband and my parents will remain independent. Alzheimers disease rates are down. Mom and Dad-in-law are both competent at age 81, and have significantly more energy than I do. They’ll both rock into the 90s knowing that they are well loved. We also have assigned rooms in their names if they ever do need to reside with us. Family will remain an important factor of our lives.
  4. Our pension is with a union which we predict will float through the changing times. Someday people will understand that those of us at the bottom and the middle are human too. We don’t expect it to happen in our lifetime, but hopefully for our children and our grand nephews and nieces. I anticipate that the union will stay in business.
  5. Our children are grown, and although there is still one at home, he’s a kind hearted young man. He knows that his situation is putting stress on us, but tries to mitigate it. He’s one hell of a salesman. He also has empathy for those who haven’t had his advantages and has learned how to positively effect those around him with small kindnesses. The other is a competent and surly, beautiful, young woman who can rise to battle as I was once able to. She’s smart, caring, kind hearted and one who will always fight for the underdog. It’s a nice thing to know that what we anticipated our children turning out like has come true. I anticipate that they will continue to amaze me. I anticipate that they will advocate for us when we need it. It feels good to know that they are keeping a close eye on me.
  6. I anticipate that I will become published one day. It has taken a lot of work, and I foresee more in the future, but I think that my dream will come true. What did Jefferson say? “The harder I work, the luckier I become.” Well, that is a truth that is hard to argue. Finishing the first book was a process of growing into wordier shoes.
  7. I anticipate, hope, dream, and lust after winning the Emily Dickinson Poetry Contest. It runs out of Chicago and hasn’t been offered for a while. This coming January it is back and will be accepting 46-80 page submissions of poetry by people over 40 years of age who haven’t had a poetry book published. (That would be me.) I’ve started the process of going over all of the work I’ve ever done and honing it down, categorizing it, slimming it, potty training it and all of the other things one must do to succeed where one has never even had a dream of success before. It’s an anticipation to fill all of those hours when I’m alone over December and January.
  8. I anticipate that I will start to make friends again. I’ve become rather reclusive. The first step to meeting people is getting out of the house, and to that end, I bought a car for me. It’s a vibrant blue 2017 Sonic. Why did I chose that one? I like the way Chevies crash. Two of the people I love have crashed tested their cars in the past 5 weeks and both owners of the Chevies got out of their cars and walked away from what could have been fatal accidents. It wasn’t what I intended to buy, but when I was out looking, I had my son looking out for me. The car had been in the dealership less than 10 hours, hadn’t been processed yet, had two miles on the odometer, and had never been test driven. In a lot of primarily silver, white and black cars, it called to me from around the corner and behind the service bays.
  9. I anticipate going to spring ball games for our minor league team, the Potomac Nationals. I anticipate going to a bookstore for events like poetry readings, sales, and browsing.
  10. I anticipate more people standing up for what is right, honest, fair and pushing back against hatred, bigotry, racism, poverty, and ignorance.

I think that I will develop a broader anticipation of what is coming in the immediate future if I am patient and stick to my value system. Kids always amaze me and give me hope. As I watch this next generation grow, I’ll learn which direction we’re headed in and then can focus my anticipation list better. I’d certainly like to become hopeful on a global scale. I’d better go back and look that that gratitude thing, too. Maybe it will allow me to anticipate some really good things in a new light.

Limerick Challenge: Week 46 Women

Published on by annwjwhite5 Comments

Limerick Challenge Week 46: Over The Years!

I haven’t tried my hand at a limerick for twenty years or so. My mother read us limericks as children and they were lovely silliness. Edward Lear caught all of us up in his style. His limericks and his Owl and the Pussy Cat were read more than once to four small children with wild vocabularies. Mom used the patterns of the poetry to calm us down and settle us in. We hated when she turned out the light, not because we were scared, but because we wanted the time to continue.

There is a strength to limericks that allows one to mock or support an idea. They are easy to remember, falling into the rhyming and syllable count. I loved the examples that this young mother gave. In fact, I was amazed that she is promoting the weekly contests out of her own pocket to give others the power to express themselves. She’s one of those young millennial that you find in the midst of thinking, writing, authoring. Strong women are the topic this week. So, mom, these are for you. (Oh, she’s Lois in the notes if you ever need to talk to her about me and my very normal insanity. Just peek at the bottom and like a jinni she’ll appear.)

 

 

My mother read books to us every night,
Teaching her children to read and write,
Her daughters so young,
Developed a tongue,
That made them unmanageable frights.

Okay, that was harder than it seemed. My mother did read to us every night if she weren’t falling over with exhaustion. And my sister and I are indeed frights for the women’s movement raising strong daughters. Hers in the hard sciences, mine in anthropology.

Genevieve's homework would nightly pursue,
The dreams of a dragon that would misconstrue,
That she was in charge,
With lethal energy large,
As her fictional writings of monsters she grew.

Limericks are supposed to be silly, but they don’t have to be. The syllables don’t have to be exact between lines, but the hard emphasis on the first grouping of syllables needs to be followed by two soft syllables. That’s no easy thing, unless you nap as mother reads.

My mother would spend her time counting sheep,
When she did global markets allowed her to reap,
Buckets of gold,
For the produce she sold,
As she took over bull markets and made them weep.

If you want help rhyming, there is a wonderful page called www.therhymezone.com that can help you rhyme almost anything. Balance your limerick on the tip of your tongue and see if you can find a pattern that soothes you.

Anyway, I’ll be posting more silliness later. Practicing formulaic poetry gives you the ability to change your style to match the need of the message you want to portray. I don’t see Limericks making it into my top ten forms, but then, I have a lot of practicing to do.

 

Thursday Photo Prompt: Protective Dark

Published on by annwjwhite1 Comment

Thursday Photo Prompt – Passage #writephoto

“What is it?”

The walls were silent. The steps were worn with a banister of varniducshed pine. Lights shone to light the corners and to keep the shadows of the past at bay. Humanity had lived here for a very long time. The garden at the top of the stairs had see lovers come and go, hidden from their chaperones by windows and a willingness to not see certain things that would make life uncomfortable under ground. Life here was cool, but not chilly. Life was quiet without being unbearable. Life was vented so that even in times of trial, the air with the fresh smell of flowers or snow would flow down to those held beneath.

Two sisters walked along the path, moving awkward students before them. Fall was a good time to move briskly through books of knowledge. It kept the students and faculty from being distracted by the uncertainty of winter. The stores from the summer’s harvest rewarded the community at dawn and dusk. Evenings flowed into music, drama and literature. Mornings were resplendent with the study of science and the explosions that sometimes resounded. History, mathematics and languages filled the afternoon, puffing student’s chests out and egos up.

“What is it?” An eight year old child peeked down the hallway at the courtyard. Her brother pulled his jacket close and then buttoned her coat.

“Shh, don’t make any noise. We’ll be heard.”

The sound of metallic doors slamming and booted feet marching filled the hallway. The children were lucky, no one had entered the hallway yet or looked in their direction. The boy pulled the girl backward, away from the light, away from the sound, away from the marching feet. They couldn’t avoid the speakers that blared.

“All persons are required to move promptly to the courtyard to begin deportation screening. Any person avoiding screening will be subject to arrest and prosecution for violation of the Homeland Security Act.”

“Children, come away. Come away now.”

Holding hands tightly, the children followed Sister Cecelia into the dark. As the Sister moved them into obscurity, the sound of gunfire filled the courtyard.

Where was I when the Night Caught Fire?

Published on by annwjwhite2 Comments

A response to https://janedougherty.wordpress.com/2016/11/16/where-were-you/#respond

Where was I when the night caught fire?
Alone as always I am alone,
Waiting for a wave of compassion or science,
Of fiction or poetry, Of well baked pies,
Where was I when the night caught fire?
Trembling on the floor, angry and hurt,
Disbelieving that yet again you left me
Without looking back. So I stood on the porch,
Watching the blaze from dead stars as their
Ashes reigned down and buried those
Without umbrellas to protect them.
I waited that night for someone to notice,
For parent, child, friend, but the silence burned
Through any preconception I had of friendship.
Where was I when the night caught fire?
Writing oceans of water to extinguish the flames.

Bludgeoned by a Tyrant

Published on by annwjwhite5 Comments

https://dailypost.wordpress.com/prompts/bludgeon/

You step in here, as though the world
At my table is yours to plunder.
You badger me, and fuss, screaming,
Taking your brief visit for granted.
You beat the table and my heart
With ruthless demands, that if not
Satisfied, compound to make the a hammer
Of your yammering, a bludgeon 
Of your will against mine. Finally,
Vegetables and meat devoured!
I place your ice cream before you,
But you have fallen asleep, 
A tyrant in a high chair.

All rights reserved@2016 AnnWJWhite

When I Found Someone

Published on by annwjwhite2 Comments

No, this one isn’t a love story, it’s about meeting someone while blogging who looked at my world from a very German/Austrian world. They found me first, reading my poems and blogs and posting poetry and photography that I enjoyed. What changed was the fact that they were traveling in the United States. They were following roads that I have traveled with my family, with my parents, with my readings. I grew up in the Midwest and that’s a world far away from living near Washington, D.C.

I remember the wild flowers that seemed to sneak along country roads. If you had time to stop and see them up close, there was a symmetry to them as well as a beauty. There were fields of corn, wheat, soybeans, and the sunflowers in North Dakota that tracked the sun across the sky. My parents were involved with crop management and plant diseases. Dad was an Agriculturalist, Mom a Plant Pathologist. Both were active in many garden societies. They made sure we children each had a garden to mess about with and I loved mine. We spent money we earned shoveling snow or babysitting on plants. I always had perennials, iris and once a peony. There was the annual Iris Society auction that we could bid at. There would be one or two bids against us, before with wise smiles the adults would let me win. I liked yellow, blue, and purple iris. I wanted to breed my own colored iris, but I didn’t have time as I was growing up and time is fleeting when you are young. Dad taught me to root ornamental bushes so that new ones would grow. He forbade me to pull them up and check to see if roots were growing. I was as bad with carrots and potatoes.

We would head west once in a while, living Minnesota to visit family in North Dakota. We went to Jamestown where the world’s largest concrete buffalo lives. My uncle Jerome, Uncle Jerry, conspired with another man to buy and relocate real buffalo to live under the statue. He bought three females and the other gentleman bought a male. They flourished under the statue. There was a wild west town that was located above the field the buffalo were in. It had a school, a prairie church, a couple of houses with iron stoves that were powered with wood, coal, braids of straw in bad times, and sometimes even buffalo chips (But those would smell very badly.) I was never sure whether or not I was being teased back then, I believed most everything my parents said when I was young, trusting them not to lead me astray.

There is a show in Medora, North Dakota. If you ever travel through the area June through August, check into one of the hotels there. They’ll ask you if you want tickets to the show and you must answer yes. The entire town closes at sunset and you sit in an amphitheater with one escalator. The first joke is that it can go up or down. It was the whitest audience I had ever seen. A combination history (somewhat exaggerated) Of Theodore Roosevelt and his ranching there after the death of young wife and a revival of religion and local color and traditions it’s worth the time to sit and laugh and be part of the past. Theodore Roosevelt national park has wild buffalo, wild horses, rattlesnakes and horse trails so that you can feel what it’s like to be in the wild west the way it might have been. The prairie glows golden through the grasses, red next to the drop-offs into the badlands. There are so many different colors of red in that sedimentary rock. White clay, oceanic clay, for this was once a sea. There are fossils and coal veins that burn when struck by lightening. Eagles and owls overhead with their shrill cries. The owls at dawn and dusk move soundlessly feeding on gophers, mice, snakes. They have large appetites.

Heading west along I 94, you leave North Dakota for Montana and it’s sage and tumbleweeds. For those who think that North Dakota is flat, Entering Montana is flatter. The ground moves down and away from the highway, and the wild west is filled with farms, small towns and oil rigs. You take a left three quarters of the way through the state and you arrive at Yellowstone National Park.

Yellowstone is full. It’s just full of people, wild animals, rangers, a probation work program for young offenders who wait tables and wash dishes. It’s a cheap labor force and one that does some good. there will always be some who seek out recreational drugs but most of the kids are glad for some cash in their pockets and something to do. Retired folks work in the gift stores, spending their off times in walking, driving and seeing the secrets hidden but waiting for discovery. Pelicans, I never knew there were so many, weather on Lake Yellowstone. Bison and Elk stand next to signs that say “Stay away from the wild animals. They are dangerous.” There’s always one parent throwing a terrified child with a grimace next to the beasts to take a picture. I’m amazed at how patient the animals are. Buffalo aren’t known for their patient natures. They are wild with the need to roam and smack horns, to defend their young and their herds. The elk seem more mellow, laying on the shoulders of the roads watching for wolves and poor drivers. They turn their heads back and forth, just watching. About five in the afternoon they wander away, finding other places to munch and watch for wolves. When you see the wolves for the first time, they run along the road, tongues lolling, happy. You can see the happiness that is their spirit. They can hunt and they will, with or without watchers. The elk are their favorites, seeking the old or new. Then you find the bears. One is head first into a bear proof trashcan right at the ranger stations. The rangers just shake their heads, for a black bear will find a way. Feet waving in the wind, it was the only black bear we saw in the week we were there. The moose that appeared with a crowd of human tourists chasing it for photos was displeased but it had somewhere to go, where the water was deep enough to shake the humans off. The grizzly was trying to cross the road. The humans surrounded the young bear who wanted to go feed. I went up to the ranger and asked he had ever had to shoot one. He wryly looked around at the tourists, then grinned at me and said, “No, but I have been sorely tempted.” There was no mistaking the humor of a man who was stationed amid the wild how had to deal with humanity out of control. I asked where we could find a grizzly from a distance so that we could really see it. He looked shocked, then told me to go one parking lot back in the direction we had come from. He said to sit there and wait. We did. A field of lupines on the side of a mountain, and after an hour, sure enough, the bear did come over the mountain. It was free of humanity and dug for roots, ate flowers and really didn’t pay us any mind. When he had covered half the distance to us, munching happily, we did as the ranger requested and got back in our car, put the windows up, and left when he was still 50 yards from the road. His ambling was precious, his path through beauty breathtaking. The moon rose, and we retired, only to find a small lizard on our hotel door. An anole of some kind.

It was the path that my fellow blogger had followed. I remembered things through the lens of their camera. I’ll have to go back to my pile of photos and scan them into my computer to share with you sometime. I miss the west, the sense of community. I miss the way people helped each other. I miss the pace of life. However, I am a Virginian now, and there are places out here equally beautiful to show people. I hope someday they will be in the area so I can show them Luray and Skyline Caverns. I’d love to show them the mountains and the ocean. I’d love to take them to a baseball game in DC and a show in New York.

On Writing and Thinking This Morning

Published on by annwjwhite3 Comments

There are days when I wake up and the words race to the page before my fingers realize they are typing. Those are the best days, when I can write 10 poems before 10 in the morning. I love to write. I get my ideas from things I see or read or trip over. The dogs don’t mind those mornings, they get put out and I stand on my deck to see the day while they look for turtles to retrieve for me. Lucky for the turtles, I’m quicker than the dogs when it comes to letting them in.

There are moments when the world crashes in flames around my simple soul. I sit motionless, letting crises after crises take me in sorrow or anger. Raging against injustice is as natural as breathing to me. I’ve been doing it since high school. That’s a long time. The world moves in circles, or perhaps on a pendulum. I’ve been accused of thinking with my heart and not my head, but I use both. You should be glad I do. In my lifetime I’ve seen amazing things. I ponder about my mother whose world has changed even more. She was five years old when WW2 started for the U.S. She remembers sitting around the radio as if it were a television on the seventh of December, 1941. Her grandmother was afraid for the young men whose lives would never be the same. Her mother was worried that her husband would have to go to war. He said he wanted to go, but his telephone company job couldn’t spare him. My mother says she sat watching the adults talk about the evils of Hitler and understood the needed to be stopped.

My memories started with my vision of course, a few flurries of blurred moments. I remember the Cuba incident, the assassination of the heroes of the 60s, transistor radios and the movies. I remember when we got our first TV. I remember when I was 2 and saw Peter Pan on my grandparents black and white tv. We started by sitting on the floor and ended up in laps and on the sofa when the crocodile turned up. I remember Vietnam and my father moving to the other room for his dinner as he watched the news. Walter Cronkite was the man of the hour and told the news as he saw it. Censorship abounded in the 60s. I remember riding on buses. I put together ideas that seemed old as time itself, but in truth were new to my parents too.

When the first man walked upon the moon, I dreamed that someday I would travel to the stars. I dreamed that I would fly upon an airplane over the tossing seas and see parts of the world that were different from my world. In high school, I got the opportunity to fly to Germany. It was very different from the U.S. I think the trip to Dachau was the worst part of the trip and still can’t get the images out of my head. I took one picture. It was sunny and spring. Tulips flowered along the wire fences. The guard towers were empty, but I could imagine the guns aimed in at us. The picture didn’t come out that way. In fact, none of the pictures on that roll of film turned out. There was one picture though. It was night, there were spotlights crossing the yard. A figure knelt by the wire fence. There was a fog. Spooky, yes? It could have been an exposure problem. It probably was, but I was stricken by the idea that emotional turmoil could be held in a place and never really released from it.

Money turned out to be important when having friends. I had very little, my parents investing in books to stimulate our minds and not in junk or stuff. I had enough toys, you can always tell when a child has enough. The floor is covered with things that don’t have a place. So, without the trappings of nice clothes that matched everyone else’s clothes, without the money for hanging out or beer, I found my self in a unique place. I was weird. You all know that of course. I don’t hide the fact. I found myself looking for something I believed in. Music was my passion at the time, but I wanted something different. I wanted to know I had helped the world be a better place.

I argued with my father about his use of the n word. I won. I told him it was unacceptable to call names, even in the car while dealing with incompetents. I explained the history of the world and the significance of the trauma that black Americans faced. I explained how it changed their perspective on the world, one that we as whites could think about but never fully understand. He never used the word again. Mom told me she had a similar fight with Grandma over Brazil nuts. She had done the same thing I did. Mom was in the car for my lecture to dad, my indignant sixteen year old sense of duty and honor offended. I’m sure she smiled while she had her head turned out the window. We were raised to be circumspect and obedient. Raising our voices to our parents was frowned upon, but sometimes, I think my parents were glad to know we were thinking of more than ourselves. It took me in great stead as I grew.

I wasn’t religious. I wasn’t raised within the confines of a religion. When I was twelve, I thought a lot about God. People did weird things in his name. I was like most kids, I would pray for something trivial “Please bring my dog home, he’s run away” and hoped that there was a greater power than mankind. I looked for fervor in my world. What I learned was that there were mysteries we didn’t understand yet, and science admitted it. So I stayed on the outside looking in jealously. I wanted my life to fill that void within me. I could never find it. Where others heard the voice of God, I heard Walter Cronkite. Where others felt at home and comfortable not asking questions, I was still the four year old asking why. What was worse was asking who, what , where, when, and more whys. I never have gotten an answer. The sisters at the College of St. Benedict told me that was okay, that someone needed to ask the questions about faith so that others would think about their own. Lovely women, the sisters. They would talk about things that I needed to talk about. They terrified me. I was shocked the first time I saw a nun in a bathroom. I had never thought about their humanity before. It was their humanity that bolstered the teachings my parents had given me. In the college, there was an air of safety. In the real world, there was again the issue of money. Money seemed to control everything. I vowed I would never substitute money for needed, clean and tidy. Silly me, the world revolves around money.

What was the most important thing I have ever done? I taught. I taught kids of all ages and loved every single one, except one. I don’t know why I couldn’t get along with that child. He seemed to have everything a child should have. Loving parents, good clothes, friends, but he kept ramming people into the water fountain and I had to deal with bloody lips and tears. He kept hitting, for no reason except he was taller and faster than the small kids. Didn’t matter what I said to him, we couldn’t get into a rhythm of learning. I had a wise boss who transferred him to another class where the teacher understood something I didn’t at the time. Bullies need to learn that they can’t bully. Her students took care of it on the playground, she was turned away at the time. But I watched because I was facing her. It solved the problem and the child did really well in her class. His bullying others was symptomatic of a society that had been oppressed and parents that told him it was okay to hit. They meant in self defense, but kids don’t always hear your whole sentence.

I loved teaching. Finding a creative way to do anything was a lovely challenge and my cluttered but organized brain understood a child’s need for tactile, visual, audio, and other stimulations. I hope that the kids remember learning something from me that is important in their daily lives. I wanted them to love learning. I hope they do.

Transistor radios, then high fi systems, and records and tapes becoming discs, the rise of the computers and success of Apple, HP, Dell, IBM all new to me and new to my children at the time. there is a cartoon of a three year old holding a phone and smacking his forehead. The caption reads, “Grandma, it doesn’t matter which finger  you use to push the button on your computer, just click on it.” Technology. I never thought I would meet people online from Iran, India, Pakistan, Turkey, Germany, France, Great Britain, Norway, Sweden China, Japan and the rest of the world. I have people I read that live in South Africa, Australia and in the Philippines. I have friends in Mexico. My daughter married a young man that I introduced her to because I met him in a video game called Everquest. I went to a ball called the Labyrinth with her, and he was willing to come meet her in person.

I’ve been greeted coming off a cruise ship with a sign that said, “Hissistor of the Horde.” That’s my nickname, I still use it when I’m gaming. Most of the gamers in the world fall into the category of 40-70 year old women. It’s an escape. We all need an escape.

I wonder what the next thirty years will be like, I’d like to be here to see it. I hope I will, medical advances may keep me around a lot longer than previously predicted. I’m a shut in now that the heat of the summer is here. Virginia is hot, humid and rather unpleasant. My brain reacts badly to heat. My thought processes show, my physical abilities become unpredictable. But in air conditioning, I continue to make rather good progress. So I’m inside until the rains cool things down. I promised the dogs I’d start walking them again when it cools off, they aren’t happy at having just backyard privileges. How many turtles can you find in a backyard, after all? At least no snakes this summer so far.

The world is changing. We’ll change with it and be amazed we do. I hope your day is full of pleasant new discoveries and that all is well in your world.

Ann