Gone the Past

We came home for me. So i could take a break, rest, and heal. It turned out that work, going to school and more work were the "pills" that await me here in my home land.It is not bad though i still cannot get to go out anytime i want to. Motherhood is wrapped around me with the edge tied to the home. The housekeeping skills i learned in Libya has turned me into a maniac for clean and order it makes me want to throw up. My house help gives me a little freedom. I can go to school on saturdays, treat the kids out to the mall while i can shop alone...husband and i do get to spend time together, alone. The bed always catches me exhausted. Husband says i snore. I am getting old.
It's semestral break in school, so we are all home for the rest of the week, except for husband who sometimes drives off to "work" which is basically only errands for the family business. I resume my thesis writing next week (getting data from private preschools within the city), Sami and I go back to school which means "back" to this daily sked: 6am wake up, coffee, quiet time. 630 kids wake up, tv (while i finish whatever i'm reading or writing) 7 shower, breakfast, change,. 730, some free time for boys to play or fight while tarek takes a shower and i clean up their mess (the house help does the dishes, laundry). 8 i shower, rush-change, off with the boys and husband to take sam to school. 9- to the city for errands, printing jobs, grocery, etc...11, pick sami up. 1130 home. 12 lunch, 1 kids nap. 230, when they are all asleep, i write. if i can't i plan on what to prepare for their afternoon snacks. i bake or cook...4, snack time. 5, outdoor play. 6, i cook dinner (or i write from 5-7 while kids play beside me) 730 dinner. 8, wash up and get ready for bed. kids usually sleep at around 9 or 10. from 10-2am i write. sometimes im in bed by 11.
So what does husband do? he is "on call", meaning when the boys get really annoying, i tell on them and off they scramble into the corner of their playroom, and keep really quiet. they fear their father. or respect. or revere should be the word. i am a pushover mom, destined right from birth to be pushed around and manipulated even by babies. i admit to be lazy when it comes to discipline but i know they love me as much as they love their papa despite of his "not sparing the rod". I can only "not spare my tongue" and it can get really bad. So gone are my ideals on child rearing, eaten up by the new kind of mundaneness here in my home country as different from the dailyness back in Libya.
Husband is right beside me asking if we can go out somewhere. Yes, after all it's vacation time. He's thinking of going swimming...maybe, if the weather permits.
What else are down the drain? In my TESL class, I was making a portfolio and needed journals for my materials. When i opened my plastic chest box of memoirs, i realized that my recent journals, about 8 of them, from year 1996-2003 have been burned by myself. Because my "other self" told me to. Because this other self was asked by fiance-now-husband to get rid of them. So gone is the past- poems, laments, litanies, thoughts...I realized that i came home for something that i ran away from. And that i ran away from something that did not actually chase me. I have been fooling myself.
I needed to embrace the truth about motherhood: that LIFE is NO LONGER ABOUT ME BUT THEM. Not that i do not have a life, but that my children are my life now. I cannot unlearn that and no matter how strong the impression of being "some kind of woman who makes a difference"...some ideal, they remain only impressions. I admire, appreciate, occasionally envy these "impressions" but i am happy with my NOW. My dreams are not on hold anymore. I transformed them into PLANS. They give me a sense of normalcy and something to look forward to - with my family.
I thought, why look for a lost needle in a haystack when there are a zillion needles in the world? Why cry over spilt milk when that milk is sour? I tasted sour spoiled milk, and know better what to do now. Make milk myself.

Newness

the old rings back
as newness it brings
how can this be?
or t'is just fancy musings?
for words that go lost
along with memory trail,
for dreams that insist
as my Holy Grail?

i want to write but cannot,
weeps my yesterday
the girl who fears fear
the road that has no way...
the poor excuse
of a block
that writers strive to knock
out of a mind
that need not think
and heart with too much
to drink.

not knowing how to begin
with newness spilling in
yet lines and rhymes
keep filling
the blank sheet that was

my dark age now has light
once again i write.

Happiness

Remembering Wildflower

in memory of the one who chose to die in order to live again...and again, and again...WOMAN.

In Memory of...

Ruminations

Ravaged in Stillness
By: Pinky Tabor

My head hits the pillow that lies between my two sons napping. More than half of the day is done. I close my eyes to sleep. Finally, some peace and quiet. Or maybe not. My thoughts are making these noises again. Lately, I've been talking to myself and I found it a good sign that I am once again socializing with an adult. It just happened one day when everything was chaotic…my mood swings were getting worse. It was so colorful at first that I was in a way thankful for remaining quite normal despite the abnormalities of my days. Then these seemingly colorful moods began to change hues, becoming darker each day until everything turned black I could barely see. In a sane way, I could not interpret what was going on inside me. I could not stop my tears. I could not rationalize. So I screamed at myself. A scream only I could hear and suffer. But I know I could still love for I am so aware of the presence of my children…and I could still pray. There was faith.

The darkness disappeared. God answered my prayers. It was just a day in my life, where perhaps I or my other self whom I talk with trivialize the complex or vise versa. It's when I think of swallowing some pills for temporary relief all because I do not want to cover my head with a scarf. The scarf that symbolizes my missing self who sometimes re-appears to haunt me and remind me of the many things I gave up for what I thought was love…Or maybe that self is actually a loveless soul? After that one emotional plea with God (wails and tears that drained me) I just let the day pass with hope to be alive for the ones who need me.

So the episode was over but the battle inside goes on. The fight to find answers or some explanation for these lethal moods goes on. The search for my other half goes on…that is why I could not rest when I should. I stare at the wall. My head is not spinning like it usually does but there is something shaking inside so hard to define. I lie motionless and still, trying to feel something. Perhaps in order to doze off, I try to mentally bore into the blank wall. Then the whiteness explodes into a splash of light…

Vague images came rushing into the picture as a series of windows open. It was almost an endless, silent motion picture. Then it stops. What was it? Was it a call to get up from where I lie and write? If it was poetry, what does it mean then? Or was it also some prophetic vision? A way into answers…ahh, I see it now.

It was a way into my stolen life- the windows, of different shades and lights that was almost like pyrotechnics. Or wait, was she really stolen or did she ran away from me and is now into hiding, resenting the life that won over hers because of my choice? I cannot seep into the meaning of these visions (or they could be plain hallucinations) deeper for thoughts choke me. Thinking about all these is actually killing me. I evade truth by burying myself under realities of life. I know that the truth wanting to confront me is more important than my daily realities, but oh I fear for my sanity. I might not be able to handle her. And so I struggle, alone. Oh so alone…

This conflict is internal. So who would care? But oh does this affect those I love. Yet how can they understand when I could not? I wrestle that which I vaguely know, for the arena of my war is dim. I know there is an enemy, I can feel it/her/him…I can see only the shadows. Though I strongly sense that the enemy is my other self, I still am not quite sure. Maybe if the enemy is what the world calls as "Factors" then I have too many fights to finish or I might even be already dying in this round.

I am exhausted. I am running out of my own self. I cannot tolerate another window opening, for I still might find nothing in there. Life is futile indeed as, the wisest of all, Solomon said it. And yet how can one Holy Book disagree with itself? Jesus said "I come that you might have life and have it more abundantly." Should I give in to "dying to self", sweat in blood, and grope in darkness like Job? Or should I fight for my "priestly rights", aim for the "perfect will of God" known as The Best life?

I lie down but cannot sleep. So I write. I find no answers to any of these yet. My heart continues to ache. My head spins again. I wrestle in and with the shadows. And although I remain still, a reluctant fighter, quiet and tearful, I am ravaged by someone who is perhaps as human as me. Yes, perhaps the enemy is Myself who refuse to give up on life, for whatever that word means to both of us.


4pmSept. 8, 2009 tuesday

Sharing Shakespeare's Shakening oh Soh...

SONNET 116

Let me not to the marriage of true minds
Admit impediments. Love is not love
Which alters when it alteration finds,
Or bends with the remover to remove:
O no! It is an ever-fixed mark
That looks on tempests and is never shaken;
It is the star to every wandering bark,
Whose worth's unknown, althoughhis height be taken.
Love's not Time's fool, though rosy lips and cheeks
Within his bending sickle's compass come:
Love alters not with his brief hours and weeks,
But bears it out even to the edge of doom.
If this be error and upon me proved,
I never writ, nor no man ever loved.

ahhh, love. should hve shared this last valentine's day..but then these days are the proving days of love----ordinary days, filled with the mundane, spats and disputes..struggles and even horrors, terror....i think this Love still lives, i speak because i bleed along with the words in the sonnet.

Just sharing...you see, this is one of the first few poems my mother shared to me. She was a teacher, a stage actress during university days (just like my grandma) and raised one son who became a rock star in our small town and later toured Asia with his band...another son, now finding his niche in the Culinary Arts/Tourism, and three daughters one of which has wandered various fields and wondered if her upbringing by a family of artists and over-acting frustrated actors, actresses, musicians, writers, etc...caused her to thrive on drama and pain. Yes, i wonder. I cannot seem to change this area of my life, my personality. I feel so much- sadness, anger, and love. And at times i could not contain them, i transform into a person i abhor. And at times when everything seems normal and okay, i tend to hunger for them- perhaps only disguised in words "meaning and purpose" when every moment of my life daily brings me an inch or a milisecond closer to what i desire...oh i dunno. Am just musing and getting so melodramatic. I miss those days...and those places---those times..so large, so magnificent and exhilarating, so dreamy in image, so unfiltered yet magical...so free, so like that girl i once knew who now is so dead.