Longing

February 28, 2025March 7, 2025 / Hermionejh / 2 Comments

I wish I could have you back, Mom. The little one inside of me wasn’t ready to let go, even though I did let go in my teens. It was different then. I was different then, but this part has remained much the same.

I want you back for myself though. I was always your needy one, but I learned to shut down and stop having needs as best I could.

You did show up for the practical things, and I love you for that. School clothes, pencils, erasers, and a pencil case. A notebook, and a ruler.

I hold onto those things because they were your love, and the most that I got, but I wish I had had more of you.

I wasn’t alone, there were others around, but none of them were you. They focused on their children, and told me to go to bed when they put their children to bed, and then to get up, to go to school, to brush my hair and my teeth. and to do the dishes, or sweep and mop the kitchen floor.

Sometimes you were there, and I liked those times the best.

You were so indignant when my best friend’s parents wanted to adopt me because I was there all the time and no one took much notice that I was gone. The commune was dispersed over several towns and houses then, but I lived there, where most of the other children were, and my sisters were, and it was during the school year.

It didn’t bother me that I was on my own a lot because I had my friend, and connection with the other kids there often, but I could stay at my friend’s house whenever I wanted.

I didn’t know that it was unusual that no one knew where I was, and no one was relieved when I came back. Maybe they would have known after a week? I never stayed there that long, but it was my home away from where I lived.

One woman who had a daughter several years younger than me once read me and her daughter a book out on the porch steps on a sunny summer day. She pointed out aspects of the illustrations to us, and laughed at the idea of a cat catching a robber by meowing loudly and waking up the family. The picture showed everyone downstairs when the police got there, and they all had a cup of tea – even the robber.

It’s now that I can voice why that has remained a seminal time and memory for me. I was included, I mattered, and a fun and loving moment was shared with me – on purpose. Her daughter was too young to really appreciate the irony of the tea-drinking robber, but I wasn’t.

My friend’s mom and dad were good and I liked them (more her mom because my friend’s dad intimidated me as he was a tall and stocky man whose presence resembled my violent father). They weren’t my people though, and I never thought of them as surrogate parents.

I knew my mother had abdicated her responsibilities when I was nine, after the divorce from my father, and she had a sort of mental breakdown. I didn’t blame her for that, but she never fully came back to us.

I think I’m mostly experiencing hiraeth – a Welch word that loosely means ‘longing for a home or place one has never known’.

Couldn’t We

May 11, 2024May 11, 2024 / Hermionejh / 2 Comments

Couldn’t we just go back for a visit so I can ask you questions that now hang in the air unanswered?

Like, did you used to thin out the hasta plants that grew along the walkway?

We were gifted several hasta plants last year and now they seem poised to take over the whole garden.

I don’t remember you gardening when I was little. Maybe I was in first grade?

I was wondering if you had wanted me to help you clear out and organize your accumulated stuff, but I never asked you. I don’t know why. I guess I thought it was enough to visit or bring you swimming at Laurel Lake, and going out for ice cream after.

Maybe we were just different, but you never failed to help when I asked. I was your ‘needy’ daughter I read in a letter you sent my now deceased sister.

Couldn’t we just meet on a sweet summer day and walk together and talk?

You could tell me more stories about your life, about my relatives.

I know it was a hard life, Mom. I know. It was hard all over, and it is again. You loved going to your French Catholic boarding school. I’m sure it took you away from whatever else was happening.

You had friends that made your world – and Harvey who was your first boyfriend and I never knew why you broke up, but he remained in your life through letters and occasional visits your whole life. I think he really loved you.

Couldn’t we have time to be together more than snippets in a dream that were strange and unsatisfying? I suppose something is better than nothing, and I’m glad I saw you as a young, radiant woman.

You offered me food, or were carrying food. Was that a message to myself from my subconscious? Maybe I need spiritual food now?

Change is tough, but so much changes all the time you’d think I’d be used to it. But I’ve also lived in the same place for ten years, but I don’t expect that will always be so. I’ve had the same routines, hung out with many of the same people – so there’s a sense of stability even though we’re all changing all the time. We’re growing older, and friends and relatives are leaving or have left us.

I heard your voice say “what a rainy day,” as I looked out the porch window onto the steady rain dampening the days plans.

I thought you were really there for a moment because I hadn’t been thinking of you, but it was your voice I heard. It was both comforting and filled me with longing to see you again.

Thank you for what you did for me, and for loving me.

Evolution Of A Boy

February 6, 2013February 7, 2013 / Hermionejh / 8 Comments

I found this letter/ode I had written to my son in a bunch of old papers I was going through to recycle today. I wrote it when he was twelve, and pulling further and further away from me – right on schedule! But just because biology dictates a thing so, doesn’t mean it wasn’t terrible for me…

Evolution Of A Boy

When you were born I held you close, rocked you, walked you back and forth while you screamed with colic – or was it protest at being out in this cold, drafty world from the temperature controlled, fluid womb?

You stayed in a crib until you were two and a half and began crying to me of your needs in the night, or in the morning, coaxing me with “Up, Mommy? Up, Mommy – peas. Peas, Mommy?” How could I ignore that? You asked so politely, so pleadingly.

As a toddler, and ever since you were born, I read to you day and night. It became the bedtime routine: books and a back rub until you fell asleep. Often you would play with my ear – a throw back from your nursing days – a comfort habit that never bothered me. Whoever held you until you were four or five would have their ear manipulated by you.

Nighttime was our time. It was sometimes the only peace in the day. I was really present most of the time for you then, and we both knew it wouldn’t be a struggle of wills; it was a time any outside observer wouldn’t question my parenting skills.

That nighttime routine when you wanted me to lay down with you after reading and rubbing your back until you fell asleep – or nearly – lasted until you were eight or nine. I would sing Mockingbird – replacing Papa with Mama, of course – and Lily Of The Valley, three or four times each, and sometimes you would sing along. Then we would always play the ‘I love you more than’ game. “More than chocolate cream pie with ice cream and marshmallows, and a ton of whipped cream” – or whatever we would dream up. A phrase we had read: “I love you to the moon and back”, began a long tradition of sometimes jokingly arguing over who loved the other more – “I love you the most – eternity, infinity!”

The mornings nearly always had me picking you up and carrying you into the kitchen for breakfast until you were about seven years old. It seemed to help you wake up just that little bit more.

Sometimes you would jump up into my arms for a hug and you did that until you got too heavy for me to grab you up into a hug like that.

Now you’re twelve. You are on that precipice between knowing you are not a dependent child to knowing you are not quite grown-up either. It can be confusing, frustrating, and scary – but exciting too.

You are, at times and often, so much more than you think you are. You have so much to offer this suffering world. She needs boys and men who care, as you do. Societies may seem indifferent or hostile to boys and men who care, but that is because societies are not grown-up either. They don’t know how to accept the whole boy or the whole man – but they are learning. Just as I am learning to let go – but I have built a path from my heart to yours – and there is a path from your heart to mine too – so that we’ll always know there is a home for us, especially when you find the need, or just to be reassured that it’s there.

I love you my dear child.

September 26th, 2012

September 26, 2012September 26, 2012 / Hermionejh / 8 Comments

Happy Birthday to my beautiful son. He is the best thing I have ever done, although I take no credit for his amazing capacities and talents. He is his own person; I just ate well while he was growing inside me, and then made sure I fed him good food, gave him as many opportunities as I could afford, or could imagine, and taught him to appreciate reading, which he now loves. His cognitive intelligence exceeded mine when he was about twelve, but my emotional intelligence stills beats his – hah!

He is bound to fare better in his life than I did in mine, and that is the best a parent can ask for. I love you, my dear boy/man.