jodimichelle : i tell stories.

I’m angry and it hurts.

May 21, 2013 - by jodimichelle

It’s easier to stay this way, in the dark (surrounded by light, provided by my own understanding). To creep by the news of a fallen world, the tragedy of life, and to live blissfully unaware. You cut out cable, turn off social media almost entirely, and focus wholly on the things that surround you. And only you.

Your camera lens doesn’t even angle out, it’s 50mm lens fixed to your eye. Your view is so narrow, you can’t see it coming.

I have this huge vision for life, this hunger to taste it all. To see and do and hear. I want to feel the weight of the experiences.

But I want to choose them, too.

And I can’t. I cannot. I can hope for, I can even plan for them and then the world hits me.

On a muggy, sun-shining day: everything’s all right and yet it’s all too far gone. And it’s hard. Really hard to look forward and not straight down at my feet. It’s hard not to peer behind me and want to run as fast as I can back to yesterday, or the day before … before anything bad ever happened. Way before I understood what might come my way.

Or what might pass me by entirely.

A group of 7 kids drowned together in the tornado aftermath that hit Oklahoma yesterday (source). That one sentence won’t leave me alone. It won’t go away.

I can take all kinds of news and death, but children break me down. Because in that pool of water all I see are the backs of my own kids’ heads. Bobbing, trapped. The last thing they might have thought? Was it fear? Were they calmed? Who was there to hold their hand and usher them into the safe feeling before they left us forever? Who was standing next to them?

Because I wasn’t there. I won’t be there, I can’t. It’s physically impossible to protect them every single minute of the day. I can’t even protect myself most of the time. And it didn’t happen to me! This huge thing isn’t affecting me, but it is. Because the world’s children are scared.

And it’s not supposed to be that way.

And I’m angry and it hurts.

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May 17

May 17, 2013 - by jodimichelle

It’s cold outside
but not the kind
of cold that soaks
into your bones

It’s a cup of tea cold
and a breeze that
needs a sweater cold
but it still smells
like spring and looks
like summer

The Earth blushing
a rouge to nature

I want the warmth a
glass of wine will bring,
the soaking in your
skin effect of purple
alcohol but I don’t want
the acid in my mouth

I want candles lit and
the little easel out with
bright white paper and
a brush to blot against
it

Little expressions pushed to paper
Big emotions born in nature.

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Back to basics: Gardening 2013

May 16, 2013 - by jodimichelle

Part of my Life List is to grow a successful garden every year. I wrote that the season before we moved. So, 2010. Maybe even 2009. We spent the gardening season of 2010/2011/2012 living in rental units, rental homes and finally settling in to this house. I had my concrete planters full of herbs but no other vegetables or plants since our last garden on Ardmore.

(And my baby was still a baby)

But twenty-thirteen is going to be a good year. My fingers can feel it.

I don’t have pretty photos (yet) but it’s planted! And we have …

Summer squash, zucchini, cucumbers, sugar snap peas.

Basil, tomatoes, lettuce, swiss chard, celery (and just planed some green onions).

Melon, cabbage, brussel sprouts, kale, different herbs, and spinach.

In a smaller box not pictured yet we have raspberries and strawberries for the kids. I need to transplant my blueberries (I have two bushes) and at some point I’ll find a place for our 6-tree orchard. Pear, Cherry, Apple.

I might even get some bees.

On the flower front we have peonies, ranunculus, poppies, mums, a few things I don’t know how to spell, hostas, lily of the valley, lilac trees, some surprises, and tulips. I’ve started wisteria and hops for spreading vines and I can’t wait to throw dinner parties in the garden.

You’re invited.

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these are things

May 11, 2013 - by jodimichelle

Jessica has a special friend who is the constant in her life. When, for so long, everything in her little world was up in the air.

Schools, addresses, even what we would keep or sell. These things take a toll on children (hindsight). She also has a blanket or lovie. I thought she would cling to hers like I did mine when I was her age and my world turned upside down.

Turns out she’s smarter than me. She values people more than the comfort of the memories that she can’t keep.

I knew I liked her.

We met this friend at church, then we were neighbors, then not and now … We are again. And the peace that this brings her is like being grounded for the first time after realizing gravity was always there.

She likes to climb trees and listen to music, she wants to swim every.day and always has a reason for a tent. She’s not a morning person, loves math, wants to be a rock star, collects stuffed animals and can bake bread from scratch.

These are the things I can chatter off to you, like a list in the air. Check, check, check. These are the things she wears for the the whole world to see.

What she keeps inside, those secret places for the daring, for the dreams. For those wishes we all count down on birthday cakes: those are what she shows me when she doesn’t know I’m looking.

Like sometimes she doesn’t feel like she fits, and she’s loyal to her core but confused when people disappoint her. She soaks everything in and, like the librarian of our actions, she can recite to you all the different ways we contradict ourselves.

She’s smart but embarrassed by it. She’s wild but held down for it. She’s curious.

I can see how she wants me to read her mind but I just can’t yet. I’m still trying.

Jessica’s a simple girl, she really only needs a few things in life.

First: she needs to belong somewhere. Then she needs to burst into color there. She wants you to watch her, but not sing along to the lyrics she’s composing. She’ll ask for your hand and always give you her heart.

These are the things I can see about her.

Filed in: Jessica, Letters for kids, Poetry | Leave a comment
So far this year

May 7, 2013 - by jodimichelle

So far this year:

We’ve danced when everyone was watching
jumped when no one was looking
prayed in the middle of the day,
which always looks like heaven,
held hands in public and skipped
to the beat of our own tune.

We’ve cried over nothing and
fought about everything and
made up when no one could see.

We don’t have a lock on our bedroom door
my shorts are too short
the garden is planted
I sweat through my clothes
and always want more.

Our wash machine broke but our
clothes line’s still there, no longer in
diapers, we buck the naked shine.

I love this wild life, I want to live it
messy
With everyone looking and no one
seeing and it doesn’t even matter
because I don’t care.

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