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not sure yet..

Fine- A Library Poem

Fine- A Library Poem

by Jennifer Johnson

I confess.

We left them in the yard.

On the bench.

In the rain.

Atop the bowl of sunflower seeds.

We had built a fort

from sheets and twine.

We had a lunch of tomatoes and beans.

Shared water from my father’s old canteen

and talked of climbing, cake, the wind.

Our stack included:

Curious George goes to the Hospital

The Bad Day

And this one here about swamp monsters. (fittingly as it is soaked)

We read and we read (Oh how we read!)

It grew dark

and thundery.

There was rushing.

The forgetting of things.

Two days passed.

Please charge me the $17.10 to replace the books.

Please remove the snarl from your face

and the loudness in your voice

as you share our misfortune with other patrons

who are good about these things.

They do not know about our magical day.

They would never understand.

Opening Day

It was opening day of the T-ball league we had joined.
The sky was sunny.
The whole town was readying itself for the big parade and opening day festivities. There would be a band.
There would be a snack bar.
There would be hoards of kids strolling the streets of Kenilworth.
There would be our family members lining the street cheering. Then the first game.

We had signed Jackson up back in February-
The call had come in the way it always does: my dear sister- with an invitation.
Our sons are so close in age- I know we both had imagined being able to have them be together at things.
So we could be together too.
I am aware that when my sister called with the T-ball news, that I felt a quick blast of no, just a whiff of it really, and that I didn’t stay with it long enough to investigate it.
I know that when I told my husband Chris his face lit up at the prospect of having his son play ball.
Somewhere in the minute between the phone ringing and my initial gut feeling, I second-guessed my no and hovered somewhere, caught between my sister’s well-meaning invitation, and my own deep intuition.

We had been through this half a dozen times- day camps, art classes, trips, and I had heretofore been able to successfully field the slight disapproval coming from my sister.
Brush it off.
Chris asked Jackson if he wanted to play and Jackson said, quite pleasantly, “no”. Chris asked again- “why not?”
"Because, Daddy, it just isn’t something I want to do" and with that, Jackson went back to drawing his volcanoes.
Charlotte, our daughter, chimed in with “I want to play!”- which was no surprise to any of us. She thrives on being with people- just being around other people's energies, she comes alive.
Not so with Jack.
Chris tried a specific question “is it that you don’t want to throw or wear a uniform?”
And, again, beautifully,thoughtfully, Jack responded “No, I just don’t want to be on a team and do baseball games”.

At this point, the phone is still in my hand. There is too much going on in this room for me to hear that original no that had arisen in me earlier.

Now comes Chris's hard sell- "Well, what if it is only practice- and you don’t have to do it if you don’t like it- would you try it?" And Jackson,for who-knows-what reason, agrees. This could be the most painful moment of the whole thing: Jackson's Yes, coming as it does after we have not listened to that first clear 'no'- both his 'no' and ours.

It takes five missed practices, nearly an hour conversation with my sister- in which I actually allow my nephew to get on the phone & ask (read: guilt) Jackson about why he doesn't want to come to the team anymore. (Wait- could this be the most painful moment to recall? Possibly.)
Chris, who is out of town the week preceding opening day, sighs heavily into the phone when I tell him we missed the practice again. My sister seems annoyed, can't see how we could have spent the $200 only to have him QUIT. She says "how can he know what he wants?"
When I say, not expecting an answer, "he just doesn't want to- what can you do?" she says, answering my non-question, "Put him in the car." I think she actually means I should PUT him in the car. Like with my body. I try to conjure an image of this and feel like I have left my own body. I feel woozy and have to hang up. I think my sister is actually disgusted with me.

For a full day, I am more than a little lost.
I reach around inside myself feeling for that original no .
Ahh...there it is. The knowledge that we would be exactly here.
That Jackson is not a t-ball team player. Not now.
That it was never going to fit for him now.
I pace the kitchen.

And then it all shifts.
I hear him first and I wander outside following the sound.
There is my son.
In the garage with his Daddy's saw, sawing furiously at a VERY thick piece of wood, just about to saw through. He has been at this a while.
He is intent.
He is working, he is playing, he is alive.
I realize then that I knew all along how my child looks when he is most alive. I know when he loves something- when he is thrilled to try something.
I know him but more than that, I know that he knows himself.
He has always been free to decide what makes him feel alive (while this has only been true for me in recent years).
He will turn 6 this May, and he is clearer about his own nos - his own knowing- than his 37 year old mother.
With this return to myself, brought about by seeing my child delight in his woodworking, I felt a huge sense of relief.
I called Chris in Hawaii- told him what I had remembered about our son, about myself, about our life, and he sighed. This time, a sigh of relief.
We don't just unschool our kids, we live a life with them that is about trusting one another's deepest experience.
We practice allowing ourselves to be known- not only to one another, but to ourselves. Here the kids are our best teachers.
Our opening is like dilation in childbirth- We go through these spaces of breathing, then there is constriction. We lose ourselves for a moment, then there is the dilation and we are moved more fully into ourselves. Into our life.

So on our best days, there is a spiraling downward and inward and then a spiraling back up and outward. A dilation followed by a constriction- wherein all things are just setting, and seeping into us so we get it more deeply.
Then further dilation, spreading outward into our family.

There is pain.
But, like childbirth, it is good pain.

And so here is what happened on opening day:
Jackson spent the morning making his onion grass soup. Collecting twigs, leaves, dandelions, onion grass from the yard, mixing in a little dirt, and then coming into the kitchen for some carrots, asparagus, and some old spinach.
There was a big pot.
There was filling the pot with water from the garden hose.
There was a little boy, loving being alive.
There was his mother, no band music to accompany the scene, no banner a-waving, watching him create his own parade.

Most of all, there was the remembering: that in this, our spacious unschooling life, every day is opening day.
And all we really ever need to do is show up.

Seeing

This is my first writing about Maggie, our sweet dog who came to us in 2001- just after 9/11. Maggie was my first dog as an adult. Our family had dogs my whole life for the most part, and though I adored them, I think I considered them siblings. They were mine, but they belonged to others equally. With Maggie, there was an immediate sense of connection, of belonging. I wouldn't know the depths of that connection until a few months after I lost her to cancer.


She and I met online (she under her rescue name: Autumn) and though she looked like a terrified, bony mess I fell in deep dog love with her. Who can explain the subtle connections that form between those who love-especially when they are members of different species? I surely was not the most attractive candidate out there in adoption land- however, I think I may have been the only one eyeing this mange ridden scaredy-dog and thinking what a catch she was. She had been an owner release- she and her brother were brought in and her brother was so aggressive he was deemed unadoptable and euthanized. Maggie came in starving with a choke chain collar grown into the skin around her neck. The story was that she was severely neglected, had never been in a house, and was probably protected from abuse by her brother. It was pretty horrible to hear her history. Oh, but her eyes- I felt her in my belly and in my chest when I looked at her picture on the website. I knew her.


After we'd exchanged a few emails, we made arrangements to meet at a nearby PetSmart, and after only a half an hour, we decided to make our relationship permanent (I, of course, knew it would go that way- but Chris at the time thought it was just a first meeting). We bought her a green collar, some dry dog food and then, we brought her home. The first night I spent with her she fearfully shook the twin bed we had in our tiny spare bedroom all through the night. I think I had one or two moments of doubt that first night as I realized that this maybe wasn't everything I thought it would be. She smelled really bad, couldn't accept any of the comforting I was prepared to give and thought our cats were monsters looming in the darkness. She peed when Chris or I raised our voices to one another - and we were doing lots of that in that first part of our marriage- and she seemed so anxious that I didn't know how to help her. People came over and met her and said "Oh. Are you sure she's ok?" and the most painful to hear: "This isn't shy, this is post traumatic stress disorder."


Slowly, though, she began to realize we were not going hurt her and a tiny space inside her opened up. I could see it in her eyes and her walk. We were relieved. So was she I think.

There were some medical issues- apparently, the surgeon at Animal Control in Trenton had performed her spay and left surgical material inside her pelvis. This was not realized until we had erroneously treated her for sarcoptic mange 4 times (which involves the dog being "dipped" in some horribly smelling sulphur concoction in an effort to kill these microscopic bugs). One night her belly incision simply split open and she found herself once again undergoing surgery.

When she came back to us after the surgery, we had to start all over with her. I felt her pain so much about being abandoned by us at the clinic the morning she went for the surgery- I could barely work.

Somewhere between October of 2001 and the following spring, Maggie came to life. She was estimated to be about 3 years old at that time. We moved into a great apartment together and she got to hang in the backyard with me while I read books and smoked cigarettes. My sister and I taught her to bark- (quite a sight to see I am sure) which was something she had never ever done since we had brought her home. She realized that a ball was for catching, leashes meant walks, and clementines were for sharing. Ours was the classic story of love conquering fear- and we were so glad to be with one another.

The next few years, Maggie became the den mother to many rescued or foster animals - canine and feline alike. She tolerated psycho puppies, maniac cats, dog-aggressive dogs, and two human houseguests who sang Karaoke on our porch until 2am. Both of them claimed to love her as much as we did. Maggie became all heart. She loved and was loved. She was in such deep relationship with me that I would merely think of something like a walk, and she would know. She came on trips with us, she was on my bed with me as I gave birth to my first child in 2004 and my second in 2006.

And so- you must have guessed that this part of the story was coming- in fall of 2008, Maggie had developed a limp. She was probably about 10 at the time but very young at heart. Because of her limp, we kept her home from the yearly Blessing of the Animals that was held at the park across the street from our house. (This would irrationally torture me for a long while.) Two weeks later she was diagnosed with a horrible cancer that took over her whole body. Two weeks after that, after a night in which she (and I alongside her) paced the house and cried because the pain pills weren't staving off the pain as we had been promised they would, we decided that we needed to euthanize her. We brought the kids with us to the vet's office, but the vets would only allowed Jackson to stay (mostly because he calmly refused to leave me).

I felt her leave her body following the injections and I wept.

Jackson watched everything and he said he felt it too.

Charlotte, months later, came to me spontaneously one morning with giant tears and said "I never said goodbye to Maggie". She was right- she hadn't. In our heartbreak, we hadn't considered her reaction fully- otherwise I would have insisted she stay. So we cried and held eachother for many days, until we one day just said it together"Goodbye Maggie" and we cried some more together. Then Charlotte was done with that part of her experience.

A year later I am just beginning to discover all of the layers in the relationship I shared with my beloved Mags. In this way, Maggie's spirit is still with me- she teaches me still. What I learned is that it is possible to share deep loving with another being. I learned that I can just be still and still be seen. Seen on an emotional and spiritual level- not just seen with someone's eyes. I don't have to turn cartwheels or take care of anybody to get loved. That is what Maggie was trying to teach me from the first night she came home- stop doing, and just be with me. Be with me as I shake, as I fear, as I practice trust. I learned how to do it for her and I thereby learned how to give it to myself. This kind of deep loving was something that had been in short supply in my life- though some might be surprised to know that. With Maggie it didn't matter if I was smart or did something stupid. I could be useless or productive, kind-hearted in my dealings with the world or mean spirited and small minded. Over the years we were together, I lost my way a few times, felt more than scared about my life. She lay at my feet as I struggled with fears about my own health and my total scare about being sick and dying and leaving my kids without me. It was the simplicity of our contract that was so nourishing. I feel like she saw some essence in me- something I never even really saw (or forgot I knew about) in myself. My me-ness. The requirement for our relationship was this: show up, give and receive love (which is much easier when you allow yourself to be seen). In that way she reminded me of my grandmother - who I lost in 1995. She was one of the other beings in my life who truly saw me and who allowed herself to be seen by me. I think I cried as hard about losing her as I did about Maggie. Actually I think it may have all been the same big cry. From the same hole in my heart.





When we were looking for a dog, I looked at probably 600 ads. I am so glad I answered Maggie's. I am grateful for each moment that I get to remember her and feel her presence in my life. I get lots of chances to do that. When there is lightning and rain, when I throw a tennis ball to our newest canine family member and she unabashedly leaps for it, when I feel sun on my face in the fall. I am practicing what she taught me: loving fully, seeing and being seen. I- thankfully, finally- have come to realize that it was she who rescued me, not the other way around.

Love Lessons

post moved temporarily

Clothesline

Clothesline

Blue jeans with stubborn garden dirt
clinging to the cuffs. Waist 38.
Three pairs of dinosaur pajamas-
little wild boy stains down the front of each.
Sweet polka dot two piece
no bigger than the placemat it's pinned to.
My own favorite white tee announcing
to the family of sparrows over the garage
"not all who wander are lost"
as if the birds didn't already know.


Faded red placemats, underwear for us all.
A green and yellow gauze skirt
clings desperately to sturdy brown walking shorts.
A dozen napkins rise and flap together like doves.

Held fast by beautiful invention,
-how we love our purposeful things-
these, our random suburban prayer flags,
surrender to July heat.


We add ours to the colorful others-
in varied poignant stages of exposure-
crossing rivers and valleys in Kathmandu;
our denim and gauze variety no less sacred
for having covered our bodies
while we work & grow.
Standing in the mowed grass,
arms lifted to the noonday sun,
we arrive at this line and offer wishes for the world.
This is how we pray.

Location, Location

First, the big medical update.

I don't know how to say this, but, ummm...........there is nothing wrong with me.

Yes- that's right. Nothing.

Turns out I had what could be termed an "overdose" reaction to some Chinese herbal medication prescribed for me back in May and June of 2008.

Totally fucked with my hormonal system, which in turn caused killer migraine, vertigo, anxiety, motion sickness, photosensitivity to fluorescent lighting, and last but not least, chin hair. Not shin hair, CHIN hair. One actual hair. In the same place. I will not say more about it.



So what I should say is that everything is right with me. My body was reacting just the way it should have to something weird and not ok.



I began to feel better toward the end of this year, and got confirmation of the situation from a very wonderful acupuncturist my mother in law recommended. This acupuncturist, Edith Lee, also specializes in herbal medicine. She looked at my prescription from the TCM clinic and she told me what symptoms I had probably been having. She was totally right on.



I feel such relief, I feel so sad for the lost time, I feel so amazed that I found myself in this place where I was questioning everything about how I do my life.

Thank you to the woman who wrote the wrong dosage on the label of that brown bottle. Was her name Betty? I think it was.

Dear Betty-
Thank you for introducing me to Now. I am grateful. I am hoping I don't forget everything I remembered.
Yours,
Jennifer