Inspiration?

[wendybeth]

Mother's Day

Last night, after a long and very trying day at work, I went to the store, came home and made dinner, and then collapsed in front of the computer.
Seconds later, my nine year old daughter came into the room. "Wanna go play?" No, honey- mommy's tired- just give me a few, okay? She disappears downstairs, and I fall back into the day's news. A short time later she is back upstairs, holding a large box and giggling. I ignore her, as I am immersed in the latest scandal from City Hall.

"Hey, Mom!"

I roll my eyes and take a deep breath. "Yes....?"

"Come here!" (Giggle).

Sigh. I reluctantly drag myself away from the computer and go into the dining room. She is standing there, looking kind of silly, really- wearing a tiara, her dance costume from last year, and sort of a Princess Leia meets Cindy Brady do that is probably going to be next years trend. She gestures to the box and says "Happy Mother's Day!" I can't help but laugh. Every year she gives me my presents early- she cannot keep a secret, ever. I begin to open the box, thinking I will encounter some homemade flowers, clay pot or the like. Instead, inside are two wrapped presents. I pick up one and unwrap it, and I discover a cd. "David Bonie, Mom! Just like you like!" I was amazed- we were recently at the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame, and we had seen David Bowie's costumes in an exhibit. I'd told her how much I used to like him, and....well, she remembered.

I opened the next package- it was a book. "Peter and the Starcatchers", by Dave Barry and Ridley Pearson. I'd read about it some time ago and commented on how I was looking forward to reading it. I gave the Girl a big, teary hug, and listened as her Grandma told me how she had selected these gifts all by herself. Part of me was amazed that she already knew me so well, and another part of me realised that this was yet another sign of her growing up.

I love my presents, but I really hope I wake up to a basket of homemade flowers on Mother's Day.

[blueerica]

Yeah, I know that this one was my week, and I really should have had something to write about my mother, but when it came down to it, I didn't have it in me to write anything, and what I wanted to write was just going to take more energy than I had to give.

My mom is a special person, and no, I don't mean "special." She's smart, witty, funny, and is a compassionate soul. As I was growing up, we were friends. She talked to me about everything, even asked me for advice. I thought it was cool for a while, but ultimately, I longed for the kind of parent that would have rules for me to break. I had no guidelines, just those I made for myself. All my friends thought it was cool; I just felt put upon.

I guess that when my mom first broke the news that she was pregnant with me, my family was shocked. Of course, my father wasn't supposed to be able to have any children of his own, so there was that aspect of shock. It's just that my mom went into the marriage with my father fully understanding of the situation, and was fine with it. No one ever thought she would have kids, and most didn't think she was the mothering type. And I don't know if she really ever was.

I've had a lot of hurt with my mom, and a lot of good times. Joy and sorrow. She's seen me shine, and she's seen me at the bottom. She's probably the only one who knows what's really up, and what's really down with me. For the longest time, she didn't know that I was faking happiness, but once she learned that component, she knew me again.

I visited with my mom on mother's day. My two younger sisters were running over her when I walked through the door. Mom & I talked for a while, and when I could really see how upset she was, I sent her to relax in her bedroom, while I cracked the whip over my sisters. While it was probably fine in the 1-kid-at-a-time situation to be "friends" it probably isn't when you have two or more to handle. The twins know which buttons to push, how far they can go, and that mom just feels guilty all the time, and will cave into them, even when they're at their worst. My mom is learning to set down rules, and to draw the line with them, but it's an uphill battle. Her blood pressure is sky high. She feels sick all the time. Tight.

She's lost weight, but she works a tough job. She works the night shift as a custodian for the Santa Ana School District. She carries around a vacuum cleaner that looks something straight out of ghostbusters, and just as heavy as you might imagine it would be. She's got lines around her eyes.

My mom is beautiful, even if the wear is starting to show. I see pictures of her in her 20s and 30s, even 40s, and I think wow... I won't even ever look that good. It's hard for me to believe that she thought (and still thinks of) herself an ugly duck. I suppose that years in high school with first the brainy set, and then the druggie set doesn't exactly inspire confidence.

She's been through a lot. She makes it through, even if she thinks she's going to drop dead tomorrow. I don't think I want to be like her, but I love her. There's a lot of her that I want to take with me. She wears her heart on her sleeve, something I've only started pinning on. It's a tough road she took, filled with unpopular choices. But she's my mom, and I love her.

[Eliza Hodgkins 1812]

Her picture hangs on my wall. I found it in my parent’s garage, forgotten or misplaced like a once brilliant epiphany. Windex made it worthy of white wash again, though the cheap and yellowed plastic frame is chipped on one edge and begs replacing.

The photograph was taken of her in Hawaii. She looks reposed and mildly in love. One arm is slender and crooked; both emerging from a tie-dyed t-shirt sized very small. This woman’s image is a swirl of sin and innocence, a true summer of love vision appropriate to the 1970's.

She is slight but tall. Her cheekbones are high and promise youth even in her maturity. At the time she boasted an afro perm. In life it was red and as ostentatious as she was, but here she is rendered in subtle black and white. This moment in time gives her a false but majestic grace.

This woman looks capable of lying and speaking blunt truths in the span of one sentence. I can see Mrs Darling’s kiss hidden in her faint smile. I spy a secret. I spy carefree.

This woman is not my mother. She’s just some beautiful girl who looks pretty upon my wall. I have her shape, though my breasts are much larger and I carry more weight. Her legs are longer than my own, though I have a longer torso which makes me the taller. You cannot see her legs in the photograph. Our eyes are green but here they look pale grey. Our smiles don't match but I inherited my grandmother's grin. We are dusted with freckles. If I look through a collection of my own photographs I will not find any of me that look reposed and mildly in love. I’ve never looked graceful or majestic, and I’ve never looked past a lens into the eyes of man who saw the best in me, and learned how to capture it for others to see.

This woman is not my mother. She is someone’s promiscuous lover, and he is taking her photograph.

She is twenty-six but she looks twenty or thirty-five, depending on when I’m looking at her, or maybe it’s how I’m looking at her. I was twenty-six the year I found the picture and hung it on my wall, and it frightened me to think how much could happen in twenty-six years: a whole other life, someone else’s life. One moment you are twenty-six years old and the next you have a twenty-six year old daughter who is trying to make sense of your life from just one photograph. And the girl is looking at you and recognizing you in portions. She’s falling in love with the mystery of you and trying to answer the enigmatic question mark only she can see trapped inside your Kodak pupils.

She’s looking at you and you cannot be her mother. You are something else entirely. You are the first pale creeping of the dawn and the elusive dusk as it quickly slips into darkness. You are high-tide and concealing.

You are not my mother but someday soon you will be. My smile is your mother’s smile. I can see it in the iris and in the bone structure of our hands, though unlike yours the middle finger on my right hand is crooked. Notice our arms, dusted with freckles. See how are scowls match and how easily our rages fly. I am capable of telling lies and speaking blunt truths in the span of one sentence. We are promiscuous.

There are no pictures of me at twenty-six looking as beautiful as you look now, but when you are my mother, your eyes will become a lens that traps me safe inside of yourself, where I know I am beautiful and cherished.

[wendybeth]

Awesome, Eliza!

Gotta go spread some mojo........

[blueerica]

Originally Posted by Eliza Hodgkins 1812

There are no pictures of me at twenty-six looking as beautiful as you look now, but when you are my mother, your eyes will become a lens that traps me safe inside of yourself, where I know I am beautiful and cherished.

I think I'm in love with EH1812.

It's apparent by my constant lack of being able to give her more mojo.

[LSPoorEeyorick]

Mojo for Eliza, as per usual. Never can give it to her.

I also have in inspiration thread etiquette question... if we have something in our collection that really, really applies to the topic, may we post it? Or is the inspiration thread only for new works?

[blueerica]

Originally Posted by LSPoorEeyorick

I also have in inspiration thread etiquette question... if we have something in our collection that really, really applies to the topic, may we post it? Or is the inspiration thread only for new works?

I would guess: yes.

But let's see what others have to say. I don't think there are too many rules about this... ?

[€uroMeinke]

I guess Cp as the OP has the final decission - but, as the resident anarchist, I won't be laying down any rules here

[Cadaverous Pallor]

Originally Posted by LSPoorEeyorick

Mojo for Eliza, as per usual. Never can give it to her.

I also have in inspiration thread etiquette question... if we have something in our collection that really, really applies to the topic, may we post it? Or is the inspiration thread only for new works?

To all who come to this happy thread, welcome. This thread is your thread.

The less rules, the better. Post away!

[LSPoorEeyorick]

The Amigo

Escapism was the chosen method of passing the hours sandwiched between Thanksgiving and the nauseating drive back to school for the final stretch of exam preparation. Unpaid-bill neck tension melted away at the sight of Dad’s crinkled eyes, warm and blue and welcoming. The nightmarish stacks of The Modern Novels--yet unread before the scheduled blue-book exam-- dissolved into happier dreams of dark meat fox-trotting with butternut squash. And the spiteful call from a newly-engaged ex-boyfriend became eclipsed by pumpkin pecan cheesecake and drizzly caramel sauce. One could imagine away any number of things while clasped in the embrace of a parent’s arms, or a parent’s refrigerator, or a parent’s wallet.

The wallet in question-- or its owner, my mother-- had decided that, after we’d gorged ourselves on leftovers for the third meal that weekend, it was time to shop. To her, holiday break meant that she’d have another woman readily available to navigate her wheelchair through narrow aisles of local stores, stopping to peek at the little treasures my speed-shopping father would never have noticed. She’d summoned all the energy she had after whipping up the holiday feast, and she’d taken extra steroids to make the trip. After she’d showered (and rested for an hour) and pasted on enough foundation to hide the pinpricks of petichae on her cheeks where the internal bleeding showed through (and rested for another hour) and drew on her eyebrows, we were ready. I took her plump, purple-tinged arm and walked her carefully to the Lincoln, taking breaks so she could catch her breath, gulping the crisp air and grinning at me.

We found ourselves at a sprawling example of the warehouse store trend: everything you need, crafted by small third-world hands at half the price, all available under one roof. It wasn’t the kind of place that either of us would really choose to shop for an afternoon. But we knew we’d only have two, maybe three good hours before exhaustion from the low platelets would put and end to our excursion. With an auto-immune disease, one-stop shopping was the best you could hope for.

Parking-spotting, a gift with which I was not blessed, was especially challenging in the days post-turkey mortem. Every blue-lined spot at the front had already been taken-- some by curiously sporty cars with conspicuously absent disabled licenses. We were left with a spot at the back between two SUVs in a pissing contest over which could park more over the line. Leaving as much space as I could on her side, I mashed my various chub sideways out of Dad’s Silver Bullet and popped the trunk. The wheelchair, a worthy adversary of shopping trips past, glinted and sneered at me.

“You know, we can always change our minds,” Mom called from her seat. “I don’t want you to have to push me around.”

“No worries. I’ve got it.” I seized the wheel and yanked upwards, catching the handles on the top lip of the trunk. I grappled with the handles and the armrests scraped the bumper. I yanked up by the armrests and finally the vile thing let loose-- but not before the wheels spun out and pinched my pinkie finger. I bit my lip and swore silently, and took a breath to clear my head before I wedged her chair into the space between our car and the neighboring monstrosity so that she’d only see a smile that said we were ready to move inside.

The doors and the mass of crowds parted as we rolled into the garish lighting of the superstore. A besmocked twenty-something with dead eyes and a pasted-on grin stood watch over a line of shopping carts. I grinned back with my own pasted-on grin. “Happy holidays how are you today,” he monotoned. I mumbled something back, pushing the chair towards the awaiting aisles.

Mom jerked her hand up to stop me. “Back up, go slower,” she murmured. “Let’s take our time.” A little confused, I rolled her back a few inches. “Farther,” she coaxed. Another step wasn’t enough, so I turned towards the door and, dodging an influx of shoppers, yanked her back until she finally felt satisfied. I looked up to see that we were again facing the zombie greeter. “Good morning,” Mom bubbled. “How are you today?”

The bewildered greeter gaped at her for a moment before registering that she was actually talking to him. “Um, I’m… OK. How about you?”

“Happy to be out.”

“Happy to be out today?” Greeter asked.

“I don’t get out too much anymore.”

“On a day like today, though… The crowds are rough.”

“Only if you’ve been standing on your feet greeting for… how long have you been here, anyway?”

He groaned. “Since five this morning. This isn’t exactly the easiest weekend for shopping.”

“Ah, but it’s the best. My girl’s home from college today.”

“That’s nice. Can I help you with anything?”

“She’s studying theatre. Runs a Shakespeare company.”

“Mom! Nobody wants to hear about that.” I rolled my eyes at nobody in particular.

Greeter smiled an actual smile at me. “Wow, a theatre company.”

“She directed Hamlet this year. And now here she is, shuffling me around town in this awful wheelchair.”

“It’s not an awful wheelchair, mom,” I sighed, though I knew it was. Greeter straightened his back and craned his neck towards the customer service window. I was certain the next words out of his mouth would be “let me find somebody else who can deal with you,” or perhaps “why are you talking to me, again?” But Greeter waved at a frizzy-haired woman behind the counter and called out to her.

“Jodie! Can you bring me an Amigo?”

Mom let out an audible gasp. “An Amigo? You have Amigos here?”

Greeter puffed up his chest a little. “We just got them in last month.”

“Are you selling them, or…”

“They’re for people to borrow while they‘re here.” He leaned in conspiratorially. “But we only let the goodies use them.”

“Aw, I’m no goodie,” she grinned, and blushed a little through her lacquered makeup.

A humming noise came up from behind us as Frizzy Jodie wheeled towards us in what I recognized as an electric wheelchair. A shiny, zippy electric wheelchair… the kind that Dad’s insurance had denied us several times on the grounds that my mother wasn’t bedridden and therefore didn’t require more help than a squeaky plus-sized wheelchair and a family member to push.

“She’s a beaut!” Mom exclaimed. Frizzy Jodie hopped down and offered her a hand. “Oh, can I really give it a spin?”

“She’s all yours,” Jodie said, and tugged at her right arm as I tugged at her left. Trying not to put any weight on the joints that suffered her steroids and body mass, she winced and plopped from one seat to the other.

“So many bells and whistles! What do they all do?”

Jodie pointed out the forward and reverse, and an inverted triangle with a picture of a rabbit at the top and one of a turtle at the bottom. Mom pushed the curser up to rabbit and tore off towards the aisle of holiday knickknack gluttony, giggling as she zoomed.

I called after her. “You might want to try turtle first.”

“Who really wins a race by being slow and steady? Last one to the Christmas Tree aisle makes dinner!”

Greeter smiled at me. “You’d better get going.”

“Eh, how hard is it to warm up leftover turkey?”

“Well, some of us have trouble boiling water.”

“Then some of us are in luck. No boiled water necessary for reheated bird.”

“Unless it’s turkey carcass soup, which I’ll make today if you don’t hurry up!” she called from down the aisle.

“I had better get going, then,” I said, handing him the wheelchair. “Floating bits of stuffing isn’t all that appealing.”

We chuckled and watched the amigo disappear into the fluorescent horizon. “Is she always that…”

“Warm and bubbly? That’s mom.”

He pushed shopping cart in my direction. “You’re lucky.”

I nodded and trudged off in the direction of artificial pine and icicles and mom’s giddy laugh, wondering how long my luck was going to last.

(Continued on next post.)