Sons.

A few notes of explanation .

Blogging is new to me, and it is taking a while to get it right. e.g.my daughter’s comment last week, which was read as if that poem, Gratitude, was written by my mother and not by me!

Inviting you to follow took a lot of courage.

I am posting a variety of things I have written over the years, taken from my memoirs, travel journals, attempts at fiction, poetry, written usually in response to musings about life and faith, and collections that I have assembled to hand on. But it occurred to me recently that, like artists and photographers, writers need an audience, so you are mine.

Here is today’s item, a poem I wrote about my two beautiful sons a good while ago.

SONS.  by Meg

What is this thing

Between a woman

And her sons?

“When I grow up

I want to marry you,”

They say.

How easy when they’re small

Fat little arms

Cuddles in bed.

The biggest problem

Gone,

As soon as Mummy comes.

Those little hands that creep into her own

As danger

Or a teacher, or a wave draws near.

The meeting of the eyes

Across a crowded room

To reassure

And comfort

When stage-struck, he nearly dies.

Emerging

Big boys now

A shift in focus.

“Where’s my shirt?”

“I need a lift.”

“Can Geoff come over?”

“Do I have to?”

“Why?”

The testing of the waters.

Old bull, young bull.

The father

Teaching how to love their mother

By example.

Much too hard.

The mother

Yearning now

Accepting change as change

Relinquishing.

The thread of love

Stronger than silk

Her certainty and hope.

It’s later now.

She watches footy games

Half-men.

They checked to see she saw that goal

But shy

Their friends’ approval

Makes them gruff.

Be there,

But be invisible

Is what they ask.

A girl arrives

And sees him as her own.

Embrace her too

And bring her with him

Into the circle

Of their home.

The fear comes next

Streets full of threat,

The pull of peers,

Their values not her own.

These sons must make their mark,

Must test and try

And challenge all they know.

She waits and prays

And listens for their sound

Assured by faith

They’ll make it through

To pathways of their own.

And now they’re men

With children of their own.

What memories are theirs?

They watch her standing by

And see her as their child.

The circle surely turned.

Her gaze speaks now

Of gratitude and joy,

Of love that has been proved

And now becomes again

That early wondrous thing,

A woman and a man.

The mother sees

Her sons.

Gratitude.

She’s standing in the centre of the lawn.

She turns

The sunlight filters gently

Through the leaves.

She’s still.

Then slowly points one toe

And turns.

The breeze tugs at her skirts,

Gossamer light

They sway and swirl,

The colours blending,

Moving.

Rainbows catching fire.

Arms raised she starts her dance

Eyes closed.

And she is lost in thought,

In memory

And joy.

Turning faster now,

Hers skirts are waves of silk,

Layer on layer cocooning as she spins.

A ballet of colour,

Kaleidoscope of motion.

Her face reflects her thoughts

As moving to an unseen tune

Her fingertips reach up,

And tendrils of her hair

Fall down.

Outstretched she reaches for the sky,

And sings out loud

An anthem to her God

Of gratitude.

The grey-haired woman

Gazes through the shutters

At the girl

She was, and is,

And gently says goodbye.

Picture This

She’s all of 2’6, shaped like a TellyTubby, straight back, protruding tummy, little tree trunk legs planted firmly on tiny fat feet, pearly toenails and a delicate gold chain around one fat, little ankle.

Her hair has been pulled up on top of her head, and silvery golden tendrils fall in curls round her perfect little face. Eyes of clearest blue, she is beautiful, but totally unaware of her power.

Five huge adults provide her adoring audience, spellbound and slaves to her every whim.

A moment ago she was playing with her three life like baby dolls, carefully laying them side by side and attempting to cover them with a blanket twice her size, lifting it above her head and then tumbling over tangled up in it, and deciding to lie down with her babies instead as a much better option.

But something one of the giant adults said must have annoyed Her Tiny Majesty!

She stood up, her offended back to the giants, stock still, eyes downcast, head averted……silent.

The royal courtiers fell silent too, eyeing each other nervously, and wondering who the guilty party was.

The little pocket dynamo continued her statuesque pose, and the room held its breath.

A sigh of relief, as the decision to forgive travelled through her little body, and she once again became the universal little Mother.

All the girl power since creation seemed to be embodied in this tiny figure.

Little heroine. Hope of the future.

Bible Stories Re Imagined.

One of my little great grandsons turns four this week. He is full of questions about God, so I have begun re writing Bible stories for him. This is one.

Jonah and the Whale

God told Jonah he had a job for him to do.

But Jonah didn’t want to, so he tried to run away from God.

He hopped on a boat and said, “Quick! Sail to the other side.”

But there was a big storm and the sailors thought it was Jonah’s fault so they threw him overboard. Splash!

A huge big fish like a whale was swimming past at that very moment.

He opened his mouth and GULP! Jonah disappeared right inside!

“Help! Help!” Jonah cried, but the big fish took no notice and swam and swam right over the sea.

“Land ahoy!” the other fish said, and the big fish coughed and out shot Jonah right onto the sandy beach!

Jonah decided he’s better do what God wanted after all.

New Room.

Thoughts on Hearing Loss.

Some time ago I woke up to find that I had experienced Sudden deafness Syndrome. A mystery. In the following two poems I try to express something of my experience.

New Room.

I have entered a new room

Its name is deafness.

I try to shut the door

Refusing to enter.

But the door behind is closed

And I am in this room.

A strange, new room

Empty and waiting.

To be filled with what?

I press my face against the door that closed behind me.

I want it back

That life I took for granted.

No music?

But that’s filled my soul.

No clarity or certainty with words?

Unsure and in a daze,

My understandings dimmed,

The world a blur of sounds

Unclear.

Or else  cacophony of noise.

An orchestra that’s tuning up forever-

The symphony to never be performed.

I try to read the faces,

Respond to gesture and expression

But I’m a sham.

I fake, pretend, murmur answers and responses

Knowing  they are false.

Cocoon is where I want to be

Curled up and safe.

Alone and with the music in my head to comfort and sustain.

My home is silent

Dawn to dusk.

The earphones make the “box” a friend

But not the music.

My CD’s are untouched, the radio put away,

The company I kept that filled my house with music

Has gone away forever

And the tune that plays in my head

Is all that’s left.

My friends and family

All want to help.

They care.

Move on from resignation to acceptance.

You’ve done it before.

Remember how.

Do it again.

Refuse to entertain that wretched guest, self pity.

Life is so good

Now and before.

All through the years.

My father’s words ring true.

I hear his voice repeating,

“God is good.”

The Owl.

I perch nearby

Look down and see

A nest filled up with hatchlings.

Their beaks are open wide

A thousand feathers flying.

The patient mother drops a worm.

They squawk and flap.

Cacophony of joy.

She drops the next

And bedlam fills the air.

I watch.

I smile.

I share.

I am alone

But

I am there.

Walking.

One of the rules imposed on the teachers by the School Board in Etobicoke, Ontario, where I taught for five years, in the 70’s, was that we were never to show any audio visual films, to our students, unless we had previewed them first.

In the Catalogue, under the heading, “General Film-  Levels K. to Yr 12.”, was a title for an animated film called, “WALKING.” The description sounded so innocuous, that I thought, No need to preview. What could possibly be a problem with a little animated film suitable for kids from kindy through to Yr 12. I’ll use it as a Language exercise to motivate writing about their observations of all the different ways walking takes place.

I darkened the room and we settled down to watch.

The animated film began well, with colourful scenes of various people, old and young, rich and poor, walking through all kinds of different places, like parks, beaches and forests .The score was zippy and I could see lots of ways to use the content in discussion afterwards.

But then, nearing the end of the film, a close- up of two naked feet filled the screen, and the camera began to pan up and up the bony legs, showing the nobbly knees, and on up, until, frozen with horror, I realized the male figure, walking so jauntily, was going to be utterly naked. As the camera moved up, his interesting little genitalia seemed to take on a life of its own, with music to match. I froze, but sat, controlled and expressionless as my Year 5 children took a peep at me to see my reaction. Apparently I was quite used to seeing naked males in living colour on the screen, and I valiantly ignored their giggles and nudges .

But there was more.

The next shot showed large sexy feet, with painted toenails. Oh no! A naked female! Up and up, past dozens of dancing little pubic hairs, blowing in the breeze and on up, to the little pink nipples keeping animated time to the music.

The news spread throughout the staff, like a wildfire out of control.” Come and see Meg’s porno  movie……….. private screenings in the library throughout the lunch hour. Adults Only.”

When I was in Canada, 35 years later, at a reunion with a group of those same teachers, one of them reminded me of the incident, and said it had been the highlight of her whole teaching career.

The Perm.

An anecdote from my Memoirs.

The Perm.

When I was 15, my mother and I decided it was time to improve my looks, by giving me my first perm, a home perm.

Because we were away on holidays in the Blue Mountains, we decided to do the deed in the first week, so it would have time to “die down” before we went back home to Sydney. Little did we know!

Obviously neither of us had any idea about the mysteries of the permanent wave.  We bought the home perm kit at the chemist and read the directions carefully when we got back to the holiday unit. We laid out the towels, the cotton wool, the glass jar, the lotions, curlers, combs, rollers and little tissue papers, and made a start.

As soon as the first fumes of the chemicals wafted into the air, my father and sister took off for a long walk.

My mother being totally inexperienced, was all fingers and thumbs and the process of separating the hair into sections, soaking it with the lotion and then attempting to wind it onto a tiny narrow curlers, took her forever. Trying to keep one wound up section in place while she tried to force another section onto another roller, was like a episode of “I Love Lucy.” When it was finally finished my head looked like a untidy pink hedgehog. We put the timer on. We’d better leave it for the maximum time, after all it had cost a lot of money, and we did want it to work! But of course we hadn’t taken into account the length of time my mother had taken in the winding.

Later on at the required moment my mother poured warm water over my head, with the rollers still in, and applied the next chemical, meant to fix the curl. After 5 minutes I was to take the curlers out and rinse under warm water until the water ran clear. At this point my mother decided to go out and post a letter, leaving the last part to me.

I knelt over the bath, pulled out the rollers and ran the soothing warm water over my head. But horror of horrors, as my fingers ran through my hair, it seemed to come alive. It grew and grew and grew and grew! My hair was turning into an afro that would have been the envy of Tina Turner.

Appalled I turned off the taps, and madly towelled my hair. Worse. It grew inches more! It was a huge halo around my head and I didn’t recognize myself as I looked, startled and aghast, in the bathroom mirror. My face seemed to have shrunk in size, surrounded  now with the world’s biggest hair.

Wide angled combs hadn’t been invented in those days, and there was no way an ordinary comb or brush could attack such an amazing outcrop.

As I stood near to total despair, my family walked in, took one look and began to laugh, rolling around the floor until they cried. They just couldn’t stop.

When they saw my real tears, however, they tried very hard to be sympathetic, but the gurgles escaped each time they sneaked another look.

The package said don’t shampoo for several days, so in the hope that the thing would go away if we disobeyed these instructions, we rinsed and rinsed day after day, but nothing worked .In fact the afro seemed to grow at each washing.

In 2 weeks I had to go back to my friends and my new boyfriend. I’d rather die. My life was ruined. I would never get over it.  Never!

Destiny

You could have been born

In the slums of Djakarta

Or Windsor Castle

Or the child of a Cult

Or blind

Become a rock star

Or an astronaut

Or Mother Teresa

You could have been

A suburban housewife

Or an inventor

Or an athlete.

You could have discovered gold

Or been a surrogate mother

Or a member of ABBA

Or scavenged for food

On the rubbish heaps in India

You could have been a boy. Or a twin,

Or disabled or a concert pianist

You might have

Become a drug addict

Or climbed Mt Everest

Or saved the gorillas

Or joined the Hitler Youth

You may have been born in Israel or Bethlehem

Before Jesus’ time

Before the dinosaurs

You might have been Eve.

But you are

You.

Beginning

My name is Meg and this is the first post for my new blog. Well, it was supposed to be! It looks like I have now posted three times with this Beginning somehow lost in the flurry of anticipation that always comes with something new. I was excited about blogging to begin with, but setting this up has proved to be a marathon effort with my daughter, Julie (a seasoned blogger who doesn’t like ipads), trying to show me the WordPress options on my old, slooooow laptop (which she loves of course), and both of us befuddled by what was supposed to be so easy.

Beginning

Again