“Where do I feel?” the worksheet asks, and a gingerbread body waits for color— sad blue, happy green, fearful yellow, angry red. My son is striped like a candy cane. Red and green, until you reach his head, where there is so much yellow. I see him hurting, and my body is a paint can filled with yellow. What if I can’t take his pain away? (Of course I can’t take his pain away.) One day, he threw a shoe and shattered a window, then just kept throwing. My cool lasted until it didn’t, then anger spilled like red paint. I screamed at the screaming child until I felt only shame. I pressed my cheek against the cool tile of the kitchen floor, sobbing, shaking. “What the point is even the fuck?” I asked the ceiling— even language had broken. But a jagged hole is still an opening, and I found myself laughing like a stripe of green, and for a moment, it seemed that love holds every color, and maybe that is the whole point.
Our journey of parenting began 34 years ago, and now we are living into that sweet space of grandparenting. I wrte these two poems long ago, in 1990 and 1993, in the days follwing the birth of our sons.
I am all warm and fuzzy from reading these two beautiful poems, Larry! The entrance of a new baby into the world feels so sacred, and you capture that perfectly. There are too many lovely lines to name them all, but I found this especially moving - "When this world pulls to make you bitter / Or hungry, cold and full of hate… / Stand and face the wind / Give peace to the four directions." Thank you so much for sharing these, Larry!
Thank you Lisa for your kind and gracious comment. I find the insights you share on your commetns to our poems alomost as enlightening as your poems and prompts. This is a beautiful space that you create and hold for us sojourners. Thank you!
Larry, these are such beautiful gifts for your children, and for us! Thank you. I especially love "In you I see a million sunrises breaking free from the dawn" and "You are a song that needs no music." These feel so personal and yet universal as well.
I felt this in the depths of my rainbow-gingerbread body. Thank you for bringing your full humanity to us so we can share ours, too. (I know spacing often gets lost in the comments depending on the format, so I'm using periods as spacers):
I let out a big gasp at the last stanza. This whole poem is so beautiful, A, and I relate to it so deeply, but I didn't see that gorgeous turn coming . . . the wish for your children to remember rather than forget the bitterness, so that they can hold space for the bitter that they carry, too. One of the things I try to be really good at as a parent (because there are plenty of things I'm not especially good at!) is repairing breeches. So after screaming at my son (as described in my poem for this post) and taking time to calm myself, I went back and apologized and then we talked about how my tantrum was proof that we all get overwhelmed sometimes, we all do things we regret, and big feelings are hard for everybody . . . and that's okay. Sometimes he gets in his head that he's the only one who struggles with anger, so in a weird way, I'm hoping that my having lost it breaks that sense of isolation for him. It feels like your last stanza points in that same direction.
It's funny, because I grew up watching my parents be mad a lot and still somehow felt that my "mom rage" was my own failing and different from them. But we also didn't really talk about our feelings much, and it wasn't until after I had my first and was crying in a car with my mom that I realized (because she told me) that she had felt that way, too. I also make it a priority to repair things with my kids and talk about my struggles so that they can understand it's normal and they're not alone and that it's okay to struggle, and I definitely had that in mind here. 🧡
I think those conversations about feelings and intentional repairs make a huge difference. Or at least, I hope they do! I don't remember those kinds of conversations ever happening in my childhood.
I've read that traumatic events are traumatizing because we don't feel safe to fully process them and/or aren't given enough information about them to heal well (especially as children), and I think that definitely also applies to understanding other people's feelings and that they're often not even really *about* us even when they're directed *at* us, and recognizing that sometimes feelings are just hard and we don't know how to deal and that's normal and we can keep trying and learning. I think if someone had had conversions about that with me when I was younger, I'd be better at processing and regulating my feelings now, and I also wouldn't have felt so responsible for others' emotional state.
This makes so much sense to me. I definitely entered adulthood with the beliefs that I should never feel anger and that I was responsible for the feelings of people around me. It's been a slow unlearning, but I've come a long way!
Wow, A - this is so poignant and so resonant with truth! The metaphors of fruit and growth, ripening into softness, bitterness and sweet lend themselves to the tenderness of this experience. I love so many of the lines here...and so appreciate the nuance of "those who allow themselves to keep growing," because that's such an important nuance. Aging is not a free pass to wisdom or softening. Growth is required. Your last stanzas were such a beautiful and moving wish for your children. <3
This is simply beauitful A. It truly comes from a heart space, and a wisdom that lies deep beneath the clutter of these times. I love the inclusive nature of your poem, and the invitation to your children to take it all, softeness, sweetness, bitterness, as they grow into their becoming. What gifts you bring to this wotrld, to your children and all of us children of the universe. Thank you.
So much good fruit here -- the idea of wanting to be soft and sweet for your children, but with just enough complicating bitterness that they'll be able to hold their own imperfections. Also the idea of growing/ripening with our children (if we let ourselves), and of giving grace to our own parents. Thank you, A!
Ah that last line about bitterness and love - so very very true. I have so many regrets but I have to hope that there was some lessons that were learned after the mistakes I have made (and the subsequent apologies and amends).
Love definitely holds all the colors, I feel that, I see that, I love that. <3 And your poem is so very relatable, so maybe that is also the point of the fuck! Thank you for sharing your beautiful spectrum.
The topic of parents and parenting is a raw one for me, but poetry heals! So thank you for bringing the prompt. My poem:
I love the musicality of your poem, and it got me right in the gut. There is so much wisdom and generosity - for both yourself and your mother - in these beautiful lines: "It seems what she meant was / I really, really want to love you / but / I don’t know how because / I don’t know how / to love myself." Thank you for sharing this warm, fragrant, nectared space within yourself!
Thanks, friend - I can't tell you what a relief it was for me when it came to me one day that if there had been subtext to my mother's words, it may have been just that - that she really wanted to love me in a way that I wanted her to. She definitely earned an "A" for effort, if not necessarily for accuracy.
This is beautiful, Keith. Your poem has a wonderful rhythm and flow, a song like cadence that is delightful to read anf follow. You so wonderfully weave the thread between the what we hope parents will be and what they often are, imperfect beings trying to love us as they continue to grow and change themselves. And sometimes parents can do real damage. You are so right about the healign nature of poetry, and therapy, journeying, awareness and facing forward while acknowledging backwards. Thank you for sharing this lovely poem.
Thank you, Larry. I feel very grateful for having more of an ability to hold all of the contrasts around my parents now that they are gone, and now that I can hold the contrasts about myself better. I think the two are directly proportional - the extent I forgive them, I forgive me and vice versa.
Thank you, Larry - there is still so much more for me to understand and aspire to...but I'm grateful for the learning that has come and stuck around. <3
I used my poem to heal a bit today as well. I'm also still working on retranslating some of the messages I received in childhood, and this poem is so beautiful, and so full of grace and hope. It helps me find that warm, fragrant, nectared space inside me, too. 🧡 Thank you for sharing.
Thank you, A. I am also in a perpetual process of retranslating, reframing, reclaiming. It can feel so many different things, that process (for me), but I am grateful for the movement. I look forward to reading your poem!
This poem is rich with compassion and understanding, Keith. I love the idea of you holding a landing pad for the words your mom couldn't say, but surely meant. And the words as butterflies -- so beautiful!
Thanks, Rebekah - so glad it struck those chords for you. It was a real relief to reach that place inside myself and to experience the new translation in that way <3
Thank you, Karri - I just pictured you actually exhaling out a charm of butterflies (I don't know that this would actually feel lovely if you were to do it, but it was a lovely image). So glad my poem landed with you. <3
This is wonderful, Billy! I love the metaphor of clouds and water, and the way you weave them together so beautifully. The growing of chidlren into the great ribers, raids, waterfalls flowing into the sea is brilliant and creative. The way you connect beginning and ending is splendid, and brings the poem to a lovely full circle. Thank you for sharing!
Beautiful, Billy! I feel like the "brackish water where their pureness fades" could be a metaphor for so many things, and I love how it all comes full circle.
Thank you for reading and commenting. Yeah, just thinking about children and how they move forward through life. Gaining wisdom and freedom but losing that childhood innocence.
I love how you weave together hope and light and darkness and disappointment all into a single poem, Karri! I especially like the line, “the pastel years, accented by ribbons and bows” and how you used changing colors and prints to show the way (as I understood it) that life often gets harder and more complicated as it goes.
Karri, this is nice. I, also, like your use of color and shades intersperced with the reality of lives. These two lines are real gems:
"All the colors of the rainbow dumped at once into any given moment."
and
"The colors can be sorted back out again."
Given the conext of your thematics in the poem, these two lines are especially powerful. You have a wonderful poem, wtether you choose to keep tinkering or not!
Such an apt metaphor for the emotional mutability that is part of life. Different chapters as different colors, with periods of them all running together into something muddy and dark. I love that you ask a question smack in the middle, serving as a hinge for the tonal shift that happens next.
I love the way you weave the metaphor of colours as feelings mixing together and then at the end remind us they "can be sorted back out again." As someone who has spent a lot of time trying to sort out my feelings, that felt really powerful.
I suspect most parents have. It's just the worst feeling, isn't it? I figured out pretty quickly that if I stay in shame, then I stay in reactivity, and it's worse for everyone. So I've learned to forgive myself and let go of my shame pretty quickly so that I can come back into connection with my kids . . . but man, that still doesn't make those moments easy!!!
The ending is so beautiful - like a hug for that amazing and unconventional “kid” of yours, but also a hug so big it pulls your reader into it as well. We’re all just making our way. ❤️
This really paints just a vivid and visceral emotional portrait for us thanks to the details you've included. Poignant and generous. Yes...we are all just making our way. I have been living a sort of "gap life" myself. Your son's sweet spirit shines even in these few words. Bless to him <3
What a beautiful and tender poem, Lisa. "and for a moment, it seemed that love holds every color, and maybe that is the whole point." I could feel those colors and I agree, the whole point is that love can hold every color. Thanks for sharing this precious gift, Lisa.
Thank you so much, Steve! It's interesting now to see how this poem resonates with others and to realize (not for the first time, but this is a lesson I need over and over) that our frailties and shortcomings and oh-so-human parts are, when we share them honestly, connection points that we all share.
Very well said, Lisa. Even though I write more prose these days, the subjectivity of poetry is intriguing to me for just the reasons you spoke about—so many different ways to connect. Thanks for connecting 😉
This is remarkable, Lisa. So raw, honest, real and powerful. We just came home from seeing our grandkids, and it is beautiful and heart wrenching to see your child and a beloved making their way parenting young ones, and the joy and ecstasy and the exasperation and frustration that goes side by side. Thank you for being the kind of soulful spirit teacher who can lead with integrity and vulnerability. ❤️
Thank you so much, Larry! I'm really touched by the generosity of everyone's responses to this poem. It's such a lovely thing to be able to reveal one of my lowest moments and be met with kindness and understanding. But I guess that was also the lesson within the moment - that love holds every color.
Lisa, this really resonates with me, especially during times of extreme frustration with my youngest. I wish I had had moments of realization such as this when she was younger. "Love holds every color..." beautiful.
Thank you, Karri! My youngest also seems to be the one who came along to disrupt any notion I may have had that I had the whole parenting thing figured out. One of the things I’m trying to live into (over and over again) is the idea that my mistakes (just like his) are actually opportunities to repair and then connect at a deeper level. I don’t think it’s ever too late to do that work - though of course it would have been oh-so-much easier if I had known from his first moment of life all the things that I know now.
to assume
"I won't fuck up"
comes yoked to each and every
"I love you"
makes an ass of u and me.
I'm with A in wanting to shout a big "yes!" So true and so good, all in so few words.
Let's all just commit the revolutionary act of assuming we WILL fuck up!
YES! I love this one, Chuck.
Our journey of parenting began 34 years ago, and now we are living into that sweet space of grandparenting. I wrte these two poems long ago, in 1990 and 1993, in the days follwing the birth of our sons.
In the Spirit of Crazy Horse (for Noah)
In the spirit of Crazy Horse
You are born;
In damp grey November
Fading light from wet city streets
The silence of stone-cold hearts fade,
Our eyes sharpen to your small form,
Your hazy eyes adjusting to the world,
Your wiggles, squirms and smiles
Make us all whole.
Two new parents share their love
through you
radiates back like alpenglow.
In you I see a million sunrises
Breaking free from the dawn,
Graceful buffalo and great bear
Lift their powerful heads
To welcome you.
Feel the spirit as you walk,
As you grow
When this world pulls to make you bitter
Or hungry, cold and full of hate…
Stand and face the wind,
Give peace to the four directions,
The sky, the earth, the spirit,
The great Love that brought you here.
Speak quietly, softly touch the silence,
And in the deepest part of your soul,
you will hear
the Spirits of Jesus and Crazy Horse,
leading you homeward.
Welcome Home (for Brady)
Welcome home.
Narrow eyes opening at first dawn.
How can this world be so cold!
From the warmth that sheltered you,
To the striped images of light and shadows,
Your entrance is a blessing.
You are a song that needs no music.
We wonder where your destiny will lead us.
In this world we travel, step by step,
Over ridges and peaks,
Through valleys and canyons,
Your footprints small in the paths
Of our dreams.
This planet will be your home.
These values, codes, learnings
Your center; the spirit that
Captures your essence.
The rainbow your soul,
Touching visions, we have reached for,
Time after time.
Your family gathers at the pass,
To walk with you, into this life.
The hope you bring is our sanity,
Your softness, our chance to be
Human, at our core, again.
Your sprits rises from those that walked before,
Healer, poet, storyteller.
Take the beauty of your ancestors,
Grow to be the strong heart
Of our lives.
Welcome home, little one.
I am all warm and fuzzy from reading these two beautiful poems, Larry! The entrance of a new baby into the world feels so sacred, and you capture that perfectly. There are too many lovely lines to name them all, but I found this especially moving - "When this world pulls to make you bitter / Or hungry, cold and full of hate… / Stand and face the wind / Give peace to the four directions." Thank you so much for sharing these, Larry!
Thank you Lisa for your kind and gracious comment. I find the insights you share on your commetns to our poems alomost as enlightening as your poems and prompts. This is a beautiful space that you create and hold for us sojourners. Thank you!
These are beautiful in their hospitality and homage to your kids, Larry. I'm so glad you dusted them off for us. What a gift, all the way around.
Thank you Keith!
Two gorgeous poems! Thank you!
Thank you Billy!
Larry, these are such beautiful gifts for your children, and for us! Thank you. I especially love "In you I see a million sunrises breaking free from the dawn" and "You are a song that needs no music." These feel so personal and yet universal as well.
Thank you A. Love and light to you on this winding journey of parenting. We are still learning!
What a remarkable gift to each of your children Larry! These are gorgeous words and works. Thank you so much for sharing them with us.
Thank you Karri!
I felt this in the depths of my rainbow-gingerbread body. Thank you for bringing your full humanity to us so we can share ours, too. (I know spacing often gets lost in the comments depending on the format, so I'm using periods as spacers):
.
They did their best.
That felt like such a cop-out
before I birthed my babies
and found myself
entirely unprepared for
everything that followed.
No one told me
.
that as each of us begins
growing into ourselves,
our parents are still growing
into themselves, too.
That maybe the fruit
of our parenting
takes time to ripen,
.
that there might be bitter -
before there is sweet,
or mixed into it.
But we do our best,
and the ones who
allow themselves to
keep growing
.
eventually soften.
Let me be soft.
Let me be sweet.
Let my children forget
the taste of my bitterness
enough to remember me
as love, and let them
.
remember enough
of my bitterness
to hold space
for their own,
and for their babies'
(which will inevitably
grow up together).
I let out a big gasp at the last stanza. This whole poem is so beautiful, A, and I relate to it so deeply, but I didn't see that gorgeous turn coming . . . the wish for your children to remember rather than forget the bitterness, so that they can hold space for the bitter that they carry, too. One of the things I try to be really good at as a parent (because there are plenty of things I'm not especially good at!) is repairing breeches. So after screaming at my son (as described in my poem for this post) and taking time to calm myself, I went back and apologized and then we talked about how my tantrum was proof that we all get overwhelmed sometimes, we all do things we regret, and big feelings are hard for everybody . . . and that's okay. Sometimes he gets in his head that he's the only one who struggles with anger, so in a weird way, I'm hoping that my having lost it breaks that sense of isolation for him. It feels like your last stanza points in that same direction.
It's funny, because I grew up watching my parents be mad a lot and still somehow felt that my "mom rage" was my own failing and different from them. But we also didn't really talk about our feelings much, and it wasn't until after I had my first and was crying in a car with my mom that I realized (because she told me) that she had felt that way, too. I also make it a priority to repair things with my kids and talk about my struggles so that they can understand it's normal and they're not alone and that it's okay to struggle, and I definitely had that in mind here. 🧡
I think those conversations about feelings and intentional repairs make a huge difference. Or at least, I hope they do! I don't remember those kinds of conversations ever happening in my childhood.
I've read that traumatic events are traumatizing because we don't feel safe to fully process them and/or aren't given enough information about them to heal well (especially as children), and I think that definitely also applies to understanding other people's feelings and that they're often not even really *about* us even when they're directed *at* us, and recognizing that sometimes feelings are just hard and we don't know how to deal and that's normal and we can keep trying and learning. I think if someone had had conversions about that with me when I was younger, I'd be better at processing and regulating my feelings now, and I also wouldn't have felt so responsible for others' emotional state.
This makes so much sense to me. I definitely entered adulthood with the beliefs that I should never feel anger and that I was responsible for the feelings of people around me. It's been a slow unlearning, but I've come a long way!
Same here!
Wow, A - this is so poignant and so resonant with truth! The metaphors of fruit and growth, ripening into softness, bitterness and sweet lend themselves to the tenderness of this experience. I love so many of the lines here...and so appreciate the nuance of "those who allow themselves to keep growing," because that's such an important nuance. Aging is not a free pass to wisdom or softening. Growth is required. Your last stanzas were such a beautiful and moving wish for your children. <3
Wonderful. …but we do our best…
This is simply beauitful A. It truly comes from a heart space, and a wisdom that lies deep beneath the clutter of these times. I love the inclusive nature of your poem, and the invitation to your children to take it all, softeness, sweetness, bitterness, as they grow into their becoming. What gifts you bring to this wotrld, to your children and all of us children of the universe. Thank you.
So much good fruit here -- the idea of wanting to be soft and sweet for your children, but with just enough complicating bitterness that they'll be able to hold their own imperfections. Also the idea of growing/ripening with our children (if we let ourselves), and of giving grace to our own parents. Thank you, A!
Ah that last line about bitterness and love - so very very true. I have so many regrets but I have to hope that there was some lessons that were learned after the mistakes I have made (and the subsequent apologies and amends).
Love definitely holds all the colors, I feel that, I see that, I love that. <3 And your poem is so very relatable, so maybe that is also the point of the fuck! Thank you for sharing your beautiful spectrum.
The topic of parents and parenting is a raw one for me, but poetry heals! So thank you for bringing the prompt. My poem:
My mother said
I love you and I heard
I love the idea of you but not
so much the reality.
Words scrambled in transmission,
sentiment crushed under weight of condition.
Yet behold the incantation.
A pinch of grace plus
years of recapitulation
breathe new life into dead translation.
It seems what she meant was
I really, really want to love you
but
I don’t know how because
I don’t know how
to love myself.
These are words I can understand
solid, resonant, forgivable words.
Free of demand.
I’ve been saving a place for these words,
a warm, fragrant, nectared space.
It’s there I wait and there they land -
gently alighting –
butterflies
in the palm of my hand.
I love the musicality of your poem, and it got me right in the gut. There is so much wisdom and generosity - for both yourself and your mother - in these beautiful lines: "It seems what she meant was / I really, really want to love you / but / I don’t know how because / I don’t know how / to love myself." Thank you for sharing this warm, fragrant, nectared space within yourself!
Thanks, friend - I can't tell you what a relief it was for me when it came to me one day that if there had been subtext to my mother's words, it may have been just that - that she really wanted to love me in a way that I wanted her to. She definitely earned an "A" for effort, if not necessarily for accuracy.
Beautiful Keith. Heartbreaking and bittersweet.
Thank you, Billy. Bittersweet is a great word for how it feels for me.
This is beautiful, Keith. Your poem has a wonderful rhythm and flow, a song like cadence that is delightful to read anf follow. You so wonderfully weave the thread between the what we hope parents will be and what they often are, imperfect beings trying to love us as they continue to grow and change themselves. And sometimes parents can do real damage. You are so right about the healign nature of poetry, and therapy, journeying, awareness and facing forward while acknowledging backwards. Thank you for sharing this lovely poem.
Thank you, Larry. I feel very grateful for having more of an ability to hold all of the contrasts around my parents now that they are gone, and now that I can hold the contrasts about myself better. I think the two are directly proportional - the extent I forgive them, I forgive me and vice versa.
This is very well said and a wise and insightful awareness. You inspire me with the depth of your wisdom, your honesty and your open heart.
Thank you, Larry - there is still so much more for me to understand and aspire to...but I'm grateful for the learning that has come and stuck around. <3
I used my poem to heal a bit today as well. I'm also still working on retranslating some of the messages I received in childhood, and this poem is so beautiful, and so full of grace and hope. It helps me find that warm, fragrant, nectared space inside me, too. 🧡 Thank you for sharing.
Thank you, A. I am also in a perpetual process of retranslating, reframing, reclaiming. It can feel so many different things, that process (for me), but I am grateful for the movement. I look forward to reading your poem!
This poem is rich with compassion and understanding, Keith. I love the idea of you holding a landing pad for the words your mom couldn't say, but surely meant. And the words as butterflies -- so beautiful!
Thanks, Rebekah - so glad it struck those chords for you. It was a real relief to reach that place inside myself and to experience the new translation in that way <3
This is so very raw and honest and healing Keith. I exhaled at the end at the image of those butterflies. Much love!
Thank you, Karri - I just pictured you actually exhaling out a charm of butterflies (I don't know that this would actually feel lovely if you were to do it, but it was a lovely image). So glad my poem landed with you. <3
This is sort of a response to your poem Lisa.
Brackish Water-
Can the parent clouds understand
What they produce?
Just drops of rain or
Pure perfection?
The drops coalesce
Through mountain streams
They flow
Growing all the while
While the parent clouds cast their shadows over them
Watching
Unable to effect them now
The clouds float helpless
The drops of rain
Roar mighty
Through rapids
In waterfalls
Forming the great rivers
Pressing forward
Unawares
Toward the brackish water
Where their pureness fades
As they travel
To the sea
Immeasurable
Vast
The sun and the salt
Pull the drops back
Lifting
Soaring
Hydrogen
Oxygen
The parent clouds
Re-unite
Children
Grandchildren
Great-grandchildren
On into infinite generations
Just drops of rain
Or pure perfection?
I love the image of parent clouds hovering over the child, now a roaring river! What a beautiful concept.
I love this watery metaphor, Billy. And the contrast you illustrate with the juxtaposition of brackishness and purity.
Thanks for reading. Always appreciate your comments and feedback!
This is wonderful, Billy! I love the metaphor of clouds and water, and the way you weave them together so beautifully. The growing of chidlren into the great ribers, raids, waterfalls flowing into the sea is brilliant and creative. The way you connect beginning and ending is splendid, and brings the poem to a lovely full circle. Thank you for sharing!
Thank you Larry!
Beautiful, Billy! I feel like the "brackish water where their pureness fades" could be a metaphor for so many things, and I love how it all comes full circle.
Thank you for reading and commenting. Yeah, just thinking about children and how they move forward through life. Gaining wisdom and freedom but losing that childhood innocence.
Ah I feel so much of this Billy!!! Such magnificent metaphors and wondering images you paint with your words!
This is great. I'd like to come back and try your prompt.
Thank you, and I hope you will!
Do it...........🙂
I feel like I could go further with this and honestly I just don't have the bandwidth right now but I have this much:
Life was pink in the beginning
The pastel years, accented by ribbons and bows.
Over time the colors became bolder and brighter
There were the years of the animal prints and the peace signs
Speaking of peace, wasn’t life supposed get easier, clearer, and more defined?
But the colors melded together and black became the only one we could see at times
The result of the joy, the sorrow, the happiness, the darkness, the love, the loss, the victories, the defeats.
All the colors of the rainbow dumped at once into any given moment.
Now I know that with time and patience and the magic of chromatography
The colors can be sorted back out again.
I love how you weave together hope and light and darkness and disappointment all into a single poem, Karri! I especially like the line, “the pastel years, accented by ribbons and bows” and how you used changing colors and prints to show the way (as I understood it) that life often gets harder and more complicated as it goes.
Yes it does...I just remember thinking "this will be easier as they get older." Um, no. False.
Karri, this is nice. I, also, like your use of color and shades intersperced with the reality of lives. These two lines are real gems:
"All the colors of the rainbow dumped at once into any given moment."
and
"The colors can be sorted back out again."
Given the conext of your thematics in the poem, these two lines are especially powerful. You have a wonderful poem, wtether you choose to keep tinkering or not!
Such an apt metaphor for the emotional mutability that is part of life. Different chapters as different colors, with periods of them all running together into something muddy and dark. I love that you ask a question smack in the middle, serving as a hinge for the tonal shift that happens next.
I love the way you weave the metaphor of colours as feelings mixing together and then at the end remind us they "can be sorted back out again." As someone who has spent a lot of time trying to sort out my feelings, that felt really powerful.
I feel this deeply as a poetry lover and a father of two. Thank you so much.
Thank you so much, Mike! I know it always helps me to hear that other parents aren't actually perfect either!
"i screamed at the screaming child
until I felt only shame"
been there.
woof.
I suspect most parents have. It's just the worst feeling, isn't it? I figured out pretty quickly that if I stay in shame, then I stay in reactivity, and it's worse for everyone. So I've learned to forgive myself and let go of my shame pretty quickly so that I can come back into connection with my kids . . . but man, that still doesn't make those moments easy!!!
(cant stop seeing these words).
That silence that settles in after the "until i felt" is deafening.
This is a gap year:
a tidy tale I can tell
that I mostly believe
and I think you do, too.
For those who want
more, there is the
gilded version:
your dad’s promised
skoolie adventure,
a tall tale in my opinion,
but one I tell
for you.
.
This is a gap two years,
I say later, and laugh
at my little joke.
If people really want
to know, and most don’t,
I tell them about the
punched-out window and
dead starter, how when
the skoolie was yours
you swept up the glass
and bounced back and forth
between the same two
rest areas opposite I-5,
waiting for news,
living within view of
going places.
.
Your dad got his liver
and I stopped plugging
college applications.
You moved into your car
and drove to Santa Cruz,
where you live for pennies,
skate everywhere,
say bless to strangers,
meet 30 dogs a day,
and maybe look uphill
at the school you got into
three years ago with your 1450,
and maybe not, and I don’t
call anything a gap
anymore, I just say
my son
is making his way.
The ending is so beautiful - like a hug for that amazing and unconventional “kid” of yours, but also a hug so big it pulls your reader into it as well. We’re all just making our way. ❤️
This really paints just a vivid and visceral emotional portrait for us thanks to the details you've included. Poignant and generous. Yes...we are all just making our way. I have been living a sort of "gap life" myself. Your son's sweet spirit shines even in these few words. Bless to him <3
Thank you, Keith. First comment on one of my poems that's made me cry. Bless to you, too!
This is so beautiful, Rebekah. The ending feels like a big sigh of relief.
Wow, this poem sucked me right in Lisa! It a belter 🥰
I had to do some googling of British slang to know what that meant, haha! Thank you so much, Kath. It makes me happy to "see" you here!
What a beautiful and tender poem, Lisa. "and for a moment, it seemed that love holds every color, and maybe that is the whole point." I could feel those colors and I agree, the whole point is that love can hold every color. Thanks for sharing this precious gift, Lisa.
Thank you so much, Steve! It's interesting now to see how this poem resonates with others and to realize (not for the first time, but this is a lesson I need over and over) that our frailties and shortcomings and oh-so-human parts are, when we share them honestly, connection points that we all share.
Very well said, Lisa. Even though I write more prose these days, the subjectivity of poetry is intriguing to me for just the reasons you spoke about—so many different ways to connect. Thanks for connecting 😉
Right back at you! 💜
This is remarkable, Lisa. So raw, honest, real and powerful. We just came home from seeing our grandkids, and it is beautiful and heart wrenching to see your child and a beloved making their way parenting young ones, and the joy and ecstasy and the exasperation and frustration that goes side by side. Thank you for being the kind of soulful spirit teacher who can lead with integrity and vulnerability. ❤️
Thank you so much, Larry! I'm really touched by the generosity of everyone's responses to this poem. It's such a lovely thing to be able to reveal one of my lowest moments and be met with kindness and understanding. But I guess that was also the lesson within the moment - that love holds every color.
Lisa, I love that phrase—"Love holds every color.”
Wow. Very well done. A lot to ponder with that poem.
Thanks, Billy! It definitely felt like a raw thing to share, but I appreciate the warmth and safety of this community so much.
Lisa, this really resonates with me, especially during times of extreme frustration with my youngest. I wish I had had moments of realization such as this when she was younger. "Love holds every color..." beautiful.
Thank you, Karri! My youngest also seems to be the one who came along to disrupt any notion I may have had that I had the whole parenting thing figured out. One of the things I’m trying to live into (over and over again) is the idea that my mistakes (just like his) are actually opportunities to repair and then connect at a deeper level. I don’t think it’s ever too late to do that work - though of course it would have been oh-so-much easier if I had known from his first moment of life all the things that I know now.