Hallowe’en Decorating

October 27, 2011October 31, 2011 / Hermionejh / 2 Comments

I don’t think I put any effort into Hallowe’en last year; I wasn’t as motivated for whatever reason. I didn’t remember how many cool decorations I have (mostly eerie candle holders), but even looking through my old costumes has been so much fun this year. I forgot that I had picked up old clothes for a straw-man two years ago (or woman, or alien…), but it’s been raining off and on for the past week so I’m not going to gather leaves to stuff the outfit, or buy expensive straw. I’m irritated when I see corn stalks selling for ridiculous prices because they’re ubiquitous around here. I’ll go pick my own. I was growing corn every year, and then using the stalks to decorate, but my landlord won’t let me have a garden, so the next place I move, I’ll make sure gardening is allowed.

Putting up my decorations brightened my mood and I feel happy every time I look at them. I like Hallowe’en much more than Christmas, but I enjoy having a tree to decorate and singing carols as well. I’ve always considered Hallowe’en to be the start of the holidays with Thanksgiving on its heels, and then right into Chanukah and Christmas.

I haven’t settled on my costume for this year, and I only have a couple of days left! I prefer cobbling a costume together to buying a commercial one, but I’ve never been patient enough, or have the skill required to make one from a pattern, or design my own. I suppose going to thrift stores and finding elements to make a costume out of is akin to making my own, but if I don’t settle on an idea, I’ll have to go with one of my old standbys.

I thought about dressing up as Medusa because I’ve never gone as her before, but I also like the idea of Cerberus. I won a prize for the scariest costume when I went as a zombie prom queen two years ago, but I had longer to get that together than I do for something different this year.

Regardless of what I end up going out as, I’m just glad I’m having so much fun this year!

A Stitch In Time

October 26, 2011October 31, 2011 / Hermionejh

When I was about five or six, my family moved into a two-story house heated by steam radiation. I used to try spinning on the twist knobs at the bottom of the cast iron radiators, and managed a three-quarter turn. I stopped my efforts at a full turn when I fell and got a black eye after hitting the knob.

My older sisters and brothers used to scare me and my little brother around Hallowe’en by taunting us before bedtime with a ghostly sounding chant of: “There’s a bad guy in the window!”, starting low and soft and reaching a high crescendo after the third or fourth refrain, and we’d run screaming up to our rooms. A night or so before Hallowe’en that year, my brothers got the bright idea of cutting out a cardboard silhouette of a man, placing it in the upstairs window near my bedroom, and illuminating it with a flashlight behind the curtain.

While the 'bad guy' in the window didn't look like this, this drawing I found is creepy enough to represent what it looked like to me.

I got so scared when I saw it, especially because one of my sisters was chanting the ‘bad guy’ theme just before my brothers moved to reveal the cut-out, or somehow made sure I saw it. I ran screaming with my hands over my eyes and my head down, directly into one of the cast iron radiators. I cut the top of my head open so deep that my mother had to bring me to the hospital to get stitches.

I remember that when we got to the hospital and they were cleaning the wound, the nurse told me that the doctor was going to sew me up, but if I needed him to stop, just tell her it hurt, and they’d stop. I was lying face down in a pillow, and yelled as loud as I could for them to stop because it hurt so much, but they didn’t listen. My only consolation was that it took three nurses to hold me still enough for the doctor to finish sewing up the wound. I was so mad at that nurse for tricking me.

Being lied to about pain when I was a child led me to always tell my son that shots, or stitches, etc., would indeed hurt, but that I believed he could handle it, and it would be over as quickly as possible. Thankfully, there weren’t many times I needed to prepare him for pain.

Shivering Wind, Blustery Day

October 25, 2011May 19, 2015 / Hermionejh

Image via Wikipedia

Fluffy white, cotton-ball clouds are moving lazily through the bright-blue sky misleading viewers to the tempestuous scene closer to the ground as furious gusts of wind threaten to blow open the door and windows as I sit here typing this.

The young maple tree across the street is ablaze with orange and red leaves, the sunlight making them shimmer and glow as the wind tears at the leaves clinging defiantly to their branches, while hundreds of their brethren are ripped into the sky, a rain of color and twisting shapes in a flora danse macabre.

Leaves piled in a building’s alcove swirl up and around in a whirlwind, settling back down in drifts, and swirled around again in the next updraft. Some of the leaves resemble tiny kites performing acrobatics, flying higher and higher until the wind changes and the leaves zig-zag gracefully down, or plummet violently in a wind shear.

This blustery day reminds me of Piglet and Pooh Bear, and I am once again missing my son and the happy hours we spent reading Winnie The Pooh, and watching the videos. I have seen the movies, and read the books with the other children I watch, but it’s not the same. I realize that I want another baby, but only if the circumstances were right. I also know that desiring another child is a passing fancy, borne of the exciting autumn winds, and upcoming Hallowe’en, my favorite holiday.

I’ll decorate my house for my inner kid, who still craves the not-too-scary thrill of ghost stories around a bonfire with friends, and shivers in delight when the wind rattles the windows during the night, and the bare tree branches against the twilight and night sky look menacing, as though they could reach out and grab unsuspecting passers-by.

Maybe I’ll buy a pumpkin or two to carve later. I’ve already been eating some of the candy I bought for Trick-or-Treaters, so I have to steel my will against eating any more, and buy what I don’t like next time!

Good Dog

October 23, 2011October 25, 2011 / Hermionejh

My friend’s dog died two weeks ago. He was one of my favorite dogs. I met him a few years ago at a party I attended at my friend’s house. I had a plate of food and sat down outside and there were at least twenty other party guests sitting around with a plate of food on their lap, but Cooper decided that he wanted to sit next to me. He followed me all day long even though I never offered, or dropped, a bite of food. I didn’t know it then, but we had just become friends.

Any time I went to my friends’ house after that, Cooper would follow me around and be so happy when I would pet him or pay attention to him. He was a sweet bulldog and I’m so happy I got to know him.

I went to my friend’s house tonight after a fun night out on the town, and we were so full of our evening that I didn’t even absorb Cooper’s absence until I went into their living room, and it hit me so fully that he is gone. I was misty-eyed as I remarked that it was so weird that Cooper wasn’t there, and my friend’s husband said: ‘here he is’, and pointed to the pretty box with his ashes. I held the box for a while, even though I know Cooper’s soul isn’t in there, but I really felt that beautiful dog’s presence in the room with us.

There are very few times in one’s life that the feeling of unconditional love is encompassing, and tonight was one of those nights. My friends said that Cooper’s spirit now lives on ‘Bulldog Island’. When I was a child, and our dog had to be put down, my father told me that she went to live in the ‘happy hunting grounds’.

All I really know is that Cooper was a good dog, and he will be missed.

Thinking Of My Father

October 20, 2011November 8, 2011 / Hermionejh

It was my father’s birthday yesterday. He died in 2003 and I miss him a lot sometimes. He had some charming qualities like his sense of humor, and his charismatic personality. His moods and actions could change in an eye blink, but when he was ‘on’ there was no better entertainment around. He was highly intelligent and quick-witted, as well as tall and handsome.

I sense him around me sometimes when I work out at the gym. If it’s truly his spirit I feel, and not just my active imagination, I guess he approves of me taking care of my body.

I miss hearing him say: ‘Oh, run down, tired, used up – doing just fine’ – or several variations – when I’d call and ask him how he was. He could bark exactly like Dino from, The Flintstones, and could make up fantastic ditties, poems and limericks on the spot. He told me that he had gotten drunk at a party one time in his twenties and began ‘speaking in tongues’. There was a woman at the party who told him he had just spoken perfect Gaelic. My father is Scots-Irish, but never knew any Gaelic.

It’s unfortunate that we never developed a better relationship, but I am forever grateful that he apologized to me for his violence and terror when I was a child, and for not being the parent he should have been. Regardless of that being somewhat ‘too little, too late’, it is certainly better than not at all.

The Precipice

October 5, 2011November 18, 2011 / Hermionejh / 4 Comments

It’s amazing how fast my inner reality can change from wonderful to dreadful. I actually don’t understand the mechanism, or process, of my mind. Regardless of the how or why, I worry that one day I will remove any barrier between me leaving, or sticking around on this pointlessly spinning rock.

I know that we bring any meaning to this world, or our lives, and that’s a problem when I can’t see anything worth enduring this life for. I see people who cannot help but hurt others, and those who actually delight in it. I live in a dishonorable society growing more hedonistic all the time. All we need do to finish the treatment is to erect a huge bull in our nation’s capitol, and start worshiping Baʿal again. The love of money has taken center stage in our society, and pushed those who seek equity to the fringes, as though they are contemptible, and not the other way around. We’re once again a nation who honors the Shylocks and Scrooges among us, and our legislators make more laws to protect the few from the many, while undoing, or trying to undo, laws that serve the least among us. Women are being treated as commodities more openly again as Machiavellian legislation is introduced that seeks to strip all rights to our own bodies, with several states either already legislating, or seeking to grant a fertilized egg ‘person-hood’, as well as making birth control a murder weapon!

I am a sovereign being! I don’t believe in your God, or your ideas about what I can and can’t do with my body. I can be raped, and if I live in Alabama, or Nebraska, or several other states, I’m forced to bear that child?! Hey, pro-lifers: Don’t like abortion? – then don’t have one! You are trying to play God with my decisions. You want me to have free will as long as I use that will the way you, you limited, fallible, troglodytes, try to force me to! Step off!

There are far more of us who truly seek personal freedom than there are those with massive egos who think they have the right to tell everyone else how to live. Those are the people who rape, molest, and torture women and children, and who are so deeply perverted that they try to control others so stringently because they cannot control themselves. Here’s a little tip: get a therapist, and leave the rest of us alone.

Cape Cod!

October 2, 2011October 4, 2011 / Hermionejh

I drove to Boston to take my son out for a post-birthday lunch, and gave him some other little presents, that he loved, and one of my sisters was able to be there too, and she brought him some fun gifts too, and we had a really nice day spending time together. My son wasn’t feeling well, but he seemed to enjoy our company regardless.

After the visit with him I drove to stay with a friend at her cottage in Eastham, MA, at the Cape. It was a gorgeous warm and muggy day after the torrential rains we’d had the night before and through the early morning.

My friend’s place is right next to the ocean and is a lovely retreat. Another friend of hers is there for the weekend too, and we had a great night talking and laughing, eating pizza and having a beer while we watched a beautiful sunset from her deck. There is another cottage in front of hers that partially blocks the ocean view, but you can see enough to enjoy.

Today started out rainy and chilly, so I headed out earlier than I might have if it had been sunny when I woke up.

I’m going to spend some time with one of my brothers in Hyannis before I head back home. I stopped at a gas station and asked the totally cute attendant if he knew of a place I could get coffee that also had wi-fi. He directed me to, The Hot Chocolate Sparrow, where I am posting this from, an off-the-main-drag, quirky and hip coffee and chocolate shop that also serves sandwiches, pastries, and other food and beverages, as well as a few ‘gift shop’ type items, like greeting cards and some locally made goods.

When I first arrived it was quite busy but it’s slowed down significantly since I got here about forty-five minutes ago. My egg and cheese sandwich was one of the best I’ve ever eaten – and I’ve been hungry before and had such food – so it wasn’t just my hunger that made it taste so good! Their coffee is sensational, and I just might have to purchase some chocolate on the way out…

The sun came out, and I can see enough blue sky to make a dress (which my Grandmother always said meant it would be a nice day) from the shop’s A-frame windows since I’ve been sitting here, so I might also go down to the shore and search for shells when I leave.

This is how the day looked once I got outside:

I could be happy living here on Cape Cod; I just have to figure out how to afford it.

I Spy October

October 1, 2011October 1, 2011 / Hermionejh

Rabbit, rabbit! October feels like an appropriate month to open with a folklore-ish incantation. As I trudge my way into the dark months, October at least carries a supernatural mystique as the month ends with All Hallow’s Eve.

I enjoy the metaphor of the changing leaves; their often brilliant, sometimes muted, but always beautiful colors defiantly – or perhaps joyously – meeting their end. I hope to meet my death fearlessly and spectacularly! I’d rather not have anyone piling my body with others to jump in, though, or leaving me out on the lawn. Let the metaphor end with the flamboyant dying thing…

My favorite thing about October is Halloween and the excitement leading up to it. The two boys that I do occasional childcare for, and I, made construction paper Jack-o’-lantern’s the other day, and the older boy drew a skeleton that was quite good. He could be an amazing artist if he enjoys it enough to pursue it. The younger boy, always wanting to copy his brother, yet make it his own, drew a skeleton with a pumpkin head. The older boy started to criticize it, but I nipped that little dig in the bud, and told them how each one was unique and fantastic. I know that’s what older siblings often do to younger ones – I was a fifth child out of six – but I do not let slights go unchallenged. The younger one has enough gumption when encouraged to stick up for himself, but I also see how the older brother’s chiding affects his younger brother’s esteem. They know, with me at least, it’s fair play, and helpful words, or time out.

Missed It By ‘This’ Much

September 30, 2011October 1, 2011 / Hermionejh

Dammit, younger me! I was back fifteen years ago for a few moments, clearly and completely. The experience was less picture memory, and more intense sensory memory;

I was in San Diego, California, when I lived in the Clairemont neighborhood with a woman who remains one of my best friends, and her two girls, one of whom was five, and the other was two. I liked living in that area, but I was failing in my life, nearly ending it before I was able to get help and start my healing journey. I was trying with all that I had to be well and do well. I took a small computer systems course that condensed a two-year program into eight months. My son was four, and attending pre-school. When I picked him up in the afternoon, we’d play, and then I’d get dinner ready, and after dinner I got my son ready for bed, reading a book and lying down with him, rubbing his back until he fell asleep – or he didn’t fall asleep until I did – which was awful on the nights that no matter what I did he wouldn’t go to sleep. Then I’d do homework until about 2:30 or 3am – every night – except weekends when I had the luxury of studying some during the day, and I wonder why I was such an emotional wreck! I applied for dozens of jobs after the course and my internship was over, and all of the places I applied wanted someone with at least two years experience.

In our current political climate, I’d be told that I didn’t make a good choice, and if I wasn’t ‘making it’, it must be my fault, and too bad I wasn’t smart enough, or working as hard as those who were successful. But, I digress…

I wish I could convey what a complete experience being back there again was, but words can only lead – they cannot fully represent. Words can suggest, hint, attempt, but they cannot encompass. Encompassing requires several levels of sensation, and understanding requires being present, otherwise you can only approximate an experience. Alas, it was gone before I could fully appreciate the scene. It was a simple, ordinary slice of my life back then, and if it ever happens again I hope I get to stay there longer!

I tend to think I’ve heard, or read about, or encountered, everything life is capable of, and then I get surprised by a new paradigm. Life sure has been an interesting trip.

On The Eve Of My Son’s 21st Birthday

September 25, 2011October 21, 2011 / Hermionejh / 2 Comments

Twenty-one years ago I was pregnant with my son. I had wanted more children, but it didn’t work out that way. I can still have a child, but wouldn’t want to. It was a beautiful, balmy, late September day today, but it started out more overcast and muggy than it was twenty-one years ago. It was sunny by this afternoon, and I decided to take a drive in the hills. The leaves are just starting to turn, but the scenery was lovely anyway.

All those years ago I had woken up feeling fine, and had to run some errands. My mother was staying with me at my apartment in Vernon, Vermont, to help out after my son’s birth. I began feeling strange shortly after waking up, but thought it was just Braxton-Hicks contractions, so I went about my day, driving my mother into Brattleboro later that afternoon to do some grocery shopping. While we were at the grocery store, I began feeling more odd and nauseated, but I didn’t feel like I was having contractions because I had some serious contractions the week before and gone to the hospital in the middle of the night where I was chided by the nurse on duty for not knowing false contractions from true ones. If it were all happening again, I’d tell her what a stupid thing that was to say to someone who, a) never had a baby before, and 2) could have been in real labor regardless of what she thought. I know she was just taking out her bad day on me, but I wish I had been more outspoken back then!

So, I reluctantly went to the hospital so that they could run a monitor strip on me to check contractions. I got to the hospital around 5pm, and my mother and I were put in a room and the nurse on duty asked us if we wanted something to eat while we were waiting as it was dinner time. I had some peanut butter crackers because I wasn’t feeling very well, but thought I should eat something, and my mother got a meal. It was after 6pm by this time, and I was still waiting for the nurse to come and hook me up to the monitor when my water broke. My mother started laughing as I blurted out “oh shit, oh shit, oh shit”, while trying unsuccessfully to make it into the bathroom – as though I had an uncontrolled bladder issue…

The nurse came in moments later and said: “Well, you’re not going anywhere now!” I got moved into a room in The Birthing Center, and I told my mother she could just take my car back to my apartment until I had the baby and would have my sister drive me back, but my mother no longer had her license and didn’t feel comfortable driving in the dark anyway. My sister was living fairly close to the hospital so she was able to get Mom and have my brother-in-law bring her back to the apartment after my birth coach arrived.

My son’s dad was living in New Jersey during the week for work and told me he couldn’t get back until that Friday night or Saturday morning, and it was only Tuesday. That was disappointing, but not really unexpected. My birth coach, Ruth, was a friend I had known since college, and she had two teenaged girls and was probably the best person to have with me. I had decided to forgo any drugs, and even an episiotomy. (I’m just grateful being tied to a tree wasn’t still in vogue.) I was determined to do everything ‘right’. I ended up with forty-two stitches that my doctor said would have been less if I had let her do an episiotomy. Lesson learned, doc!

Not to be too graphic, but my response to the more intense contractions was throwing up. Ruth ate a peanut butter and jelly sandwich while I was resting, and I had to ask her to please chew some gum, or somehow get rid of the smell of peanut butter on her breath because it was making me more nauseated than I already was.

She laughed because I was worried about hurting her feelings. At the height of contractions (nearing the, literally, eleventh hour of labor) I told Ruth that I didn’t think I could keep doing it, and to her great credit she didn’t laugh at me, or roll her eyes, but just squeezed my hand and told me that I could, in fact, see it through. I didn’t freak out and scream like the clichéd ‘woman having a baby’ motif, but it was the hardest, most painful, experience I’ve ever endured. After my doctor sewed me up I told her that I was never going to have another baby. She said “If I had a nickel for every patient that said that, I could retire now!”

At 5:49am on September 26, 1990, I gave birth to an 8 lb.,1 oz., 19.5 inch long, beautiful boy. He remains the absolute best thing I have done in my life, and I would do it all again.

I love you, my dear son, more than I have ever loved anyone else. I am so happy I got to be your Mom.