+ Her Barefoot Heart
News of The 70273 Project with a side of Jeanne’s Barefoot Heart
i had an idea
that tickled me.
i bought the unlikely thrift shop fabrics
for it:
men’s pajamas
(tops only cause call me crazy,
but i couldn’t
fathom handling where some
strange man’s privates had been).
women’s skirts.
women’s blouses.
all laundered
folded
and ready to be
disassembled
for the great
reassembling.
only in the two weeks
i’ve been gone,
i forgot the idea.
once upon a decade
i wanted him to leap onto his white steed
grab his longest sharpest sword
and gallop off
to lop off the
ugly heads of the man who raped me
and the man who abused me.
in another decade,
i wanted him to say something
anything,
though it had to be anger.
he had to show me
with his words and his tone
and his venom
that he understood
as best he could,
that he hurt for me,
with me.
and now
after 40 years of togetherness
i am content
to have him quietly by my side
saying “you better get started”
to every idea that comes through
my bones.
to have him gently kiss me every night
EVERY night, i tell you.
to have him say the words “i love you”
in more ways than i can count.
it’s not our anniversary.
i usually only write about him on the day we met
or the day we married.
then again
maybe it is an anniversary of sorts.
an anniversary of recognizing
of setting aside
without ever forgetting, mind you.
of publicly declaring
that this man called andy
is number one
and takes up more space in my life than the other despicable men
will claim ever again.
[ ::: ]
i can’t wish it all away for jane doe
it happened
period.
i can’t wish her to set it aside,
this will be with her every hour of every day
of her life.
the best i can do is wish her a husband who may
never be able to talk with her about it
because he can’t fathom how men could
commit these vile acts;
a husband who may squirm when she writes or talks about this,
something she simply must do every now ‘n then;
a husband who might cringe when she yells at the tv
because he can’t go to the store
and buy something to fix,
to repair
what happened to her.
i can
and do
however
wish for her a husband
who,
even after 40 years of togetherness,
takes the dog for a walk and
returns bearing
a lacy leaf
or a heart-shaped rock
or a piece of wood
he thought she would like.
sometimes i think a piece will never get finished.
and then I remember how little I’ve been at home in the templum
since late january
and i can’t decide whether to be
relieved to have an excuse
or annoyed that i can’t seem to get
anything done when traveling..
i like portability.
but just because it will fit in a bag I can sling over my shoulder
doesn’t mean any forward motion will happen.
i have to work on that.
[ ::: ]
today’s post is an excuse
(signed by my mom, of course, because she’s with me at the beach, you know)
(does this little tidbit help you read between the lines of this post?)
explaining why I have nothing
absolutely nothing
to take off the wall
as part of Nina Marie’s Off The Wall Friday.
sigh.
Shed reason and frets so that what is left is a lean asceticism, a looking not at the world but into it.
~ Ellen Meloy, The Anthropology of Turquoise
I used to wonder why the sea was blue at a distance
and green close up
and colorless for that matter in your hands.
A lot of life is like that.
A lot of life is just a matter of learning to like blue.
~ Miriam Pollard, The Listening God
Colors challenge language to encompass them.
~ Ellen Meloy, The Anthropology of Turquoise
Turquoise is the stone of the desert. It is the color of yearning.
~ Ellen Meloy, The Anthropology of Turquoise
In some prayers the words for turquoise and water were interchangeable.
~ Ellen Meloy, The Anthropology of Turquoise
To protect yourself from lightning, the Navajo say,
wear a bead of turquoise in your hair.
The Navajo divinity Changing Woman,
so named because she is life springing from nothing
and a woman who renews her youth each season,
lives in a house with a turquoise door
and four footprints of turquoise leading to a turquoise room.
Changing Woman looks through binoculars of rock crystal,
the stone of light beams and fire
and a natural ally of turquoise.
~ Ellen Meloy, The Anthropology of Turquoise
I have always kept ducks, he said, even as a child,
and the colours of the plumage,
in particular the dark green and snow white,
seemed to me the only possible answers to the questions that are on my mind.
~ W. G. Sebald, The Rings of Saturn
When my son graduated from high school,
I made him a quilt.
Simple blocks
of fabrics decorated
by his family, friends, and teachers.
It is not perfect a perfect quilt.
I am not a perfect mother.
But it does keep him warm,
hold him tightly when my arms can’t reach,
and shelter him when the world is just too much.
[from my journal yesterday morning, 2/14/13,
on the occasion of day one of my big, milestone birthday]
Today I wake up
celebrating
a milestone birthday.
This is the birthday card I send myself.
I call it My Womanifesto.
I have no more time to waste
on conforming
or contorting
in hopes that you will find me pleasing or worthwhile.
If you are that focused on me,
if you are willing to devote so much time and energy
to keeping me small so you can feel late and powerful,
I give that back to you and call it what it is: your problem.
I will not sit still
Or be quiet
Or calm down
on command
ever again.
Don’t expect me to show my work
simply because you don’t understand.
I am out of apologies, justifications, and explanations-on-demand
and I am not restocking.
Never again will I diminish my light
or quiet my voice
or step aside
– especially when i know i am right –
for fear it will diminish you
or make you feel bad
or incur your wrath.
That is your problem to deal with.
You may label me
and make assumptions
about me
simply because I am
a Southerner
and a Woman,
because I call people I care about Sugar
am funny
carry too many pounds
don’t use phrases like
“for the common good”
or
“it’s not fair”.
Yes, you can surely do that . . .
and it will show
your ignorance
and small mindedness.
It will say much more about you
than you are trying to say
about me.
No longer will I sit in the
cold drab metal folding chair
in the dim corner of the room
waiting on somebody . . . anybody . . . to ask me to dance.
I don’t have to like you
And you don’t have to like me,
and even if we do like each other,
we don’t have to agree on everything.
But know this: I will not stand still
while you berate me
or insult me
or call me names
or stomp, kick, or otherwise malign me
because I think differently.
Don’t have to
and I won’t.
If I like you and believe in what you are doing,
I will be your number one cheerleader.
I will support you, encourage you, hold you.
I will help you any way I can but know this:
I will not be disrespected or taken advantage of ever again.
And I will not give you something simply because
I have it
and you want it.
That’s where the word earn comes into play.
I will ask you daily if you’ve thought for yourself
so be ready for it,
because it’s what I’m most passionate about:
self-expression,
thinking for yourself.
I will if you will.
I abhor bandwagon mentality,
despise it, I tell you,
and I will do everything within my power
to support you as you burn your bushel basket.
This political correctness stuff
has to stop.
We are different,
and we each shine in our own way.
I am ready to embrace my shine,
to turn it loose,
and I’m ready for you to do the same.
I am declaring to us both
how I will live my life from this point forward:
no excuses,
and no apologies.
This is a big, milestone birthday
and for the first time in my life,
I feel free to unzip, step out, speak up.
I have tenure, you see,
so I can take up as much space as I want
and I can make as much noise as I want
and I can speak and move and live
as raucously and as tenderly
as I want.
I . . . have . . . tenure.
[ ::: ]
I love this woman, and I love this post.
This is a photo of my beloved husband, Andy,
taken yesterday as he was buying me the bushel basket
that topped the list of
What I Want For My Big Milestone Birthday.
I have a plan, you see:
I will decorate this basket,
festoon it with ribbons
and words of wagging fingers,
most from long-forgotten,
unnamed voices,
words that nevertheless linger deep and long.
“Who do you think you are?”
“What gives you the right?”
“Well, you’re getting too big for your britches.”
I will write these words (and more) on the basket,
trim them with ribbons and glitter and sparkle,
then I will set fire to the basket,
while singing
“This Little Light of Mine”.
and dancing.
Oh good lord
how I will dance.
i was scared to work with big cloth.
thought it would be too unwieldy,
would get away from me,
would be more than i could handle.
i was wrong. i like working with big cloth.
it gave me confidence and made me smile.
[ ::: ]
Tickled to be here. Thank you, Teresa.
I think of the letters shared by women who preceded me . . . “I put up 7 pints of bread-and-butter pickles today.” . . . “Jerry is down in his back again.” . . . “Katie sent me her upside-down pineapple cake recipe. It’s in the oven baking now, and it smells so good. I’ll let you know how it turns out.” . . . “My iris are blooming this year. I separated them last year, planted them not quite so deep.” Sometimes a copy of a new recipe was tucked inside the envelope along with the letter . . . sometimes an article snipped from the local paper . . . sometimes a picture of a grandchild.
I love these old letters. The handwriting is evocative and so is the dailiness of a (so-called) ordinary life. Women staying in touch. Sharing. Reporting in. Plucking jewels from their ordinary day.
Something Sarah said in her comment got me thinking about these letters . . . (she always opens a window for me, and i never know what the view will be but i always love it) . . . about how back in The Day we used blogs and the comments as exchanges of letters. We’d read a blog post and respond in the comment how it resonated with us, what it brought up in us, how it affected us. We’re share stories. Sometimes we’d take something from a comment and write a whole post around it, carrying on the conversation. We had the same 24 hours in a day and 7 days in a week, and we used some of that time to read each other’s blogs.
I miss that.
So that’s what I’m gonna’ do here in this blog. That’s what feels right in my bones. It’s like it touches some deep longing and beckons it out to be tended to. Susan says in her comment: “Share when the urge hits and if you don’t feel like it, don’t bother.” Advice that feels real good to these bones. And that’s why I’m posting twice today. Maybe even another post before bedtime (cause I’m getting of an age when at bedtime I can’t remember what happened in the morning, so why not make it easier on myself).
(But hey, one thing you’ll never read here: “I put up 7 pints of pickles today.” You can take that one to the bank.)
p.s. The photo is altar #103. I’m revving that up again. It’s 365 or bust.
p.s. 2: The altar is treasures I picked up on Daytona Beach a couple of weeks ago when we went down for the opening of the museum exhibit my first hymn of cloth is in. Yes, really. Me. My cloth. In a museum exhibit. SQUEEEEE!!!!!
This work by Jeanne Hewell-Chambers is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivs 3.0 Unported License.
Based on a work at http://www.TheBarefootHeart.com.
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