The Chair

After six months of braces, my bottom teeth are now perfectly straight. I now have a lovely permanent retainer glued to the back of my teeth. As I was feeling it over and over and over with my tongue, the assistant said, "And try not to feel the wire with your tongue or it will get sore." Ummmm......

I have extremely sensitive teeth, so frigid water and cold air blasting against my teeth, combined with cotton shoved between my lower lip and my gums made me a bit insane for the four hours I sat in the...Oh, yeah. So it was really about 12 minutes, but when we are talking cold water, cold air, and wads of cotton, time is relative.

At Close of Day

It is raining here, with lightning and thunder. It wraps me in contemplative thought.

She isn't sensitive in that she takes constant offense due to misinterpreting everyone's motives. She just reacts passionately to the things that matter most to her.

Last night she was feeling sad and angry. The only way to help C out of that funk is to first let her be angry; I have observed that our society really doesn't approve of angry little girls. They are to be sweet, and kind, and sensitive, and in complete control of themselves at all times, perpetually polite. This doesn't fly with spirited Sporty Girl.

So, I dug deep and recalled a funny story from my youth. By the end of the story, she was belly-laughing and the frown fell from her face, replaced by the dimple nested deeply in her left cheek, and her bright, sage green eyes.

I laid with her until her breathing became rhythmically slowed. Tucking into her heart a bit of joy with bedtime prayers and night time kisses is my duty, and removing what bit of grime the day brought, my abiding pleasure which I get each time I visit www.jasminlive.mobi.

You scored

You scored 14% grit, 42% wit, 33% flair, and 19% class!

You are one wise-cracking lady, always quick with a clever remark and easily able to keep up with the quips and puns that come along with the nutty situations you find yourself in. You're usually able to talk your way out of any jam, and even if you can't, you at least make it more interesting with your biting wit. You can match the smartest guy around line for line, and you've got an open mind that allows you to get what you want, even if you don't recognize it at first. Your leading men include Cary Grant and Clark Gable, men who can keep up with you.

Jet

Paul McCartney has been one of my favorite singer/songwriter/composers since I was a little girl. The first song I can recall consciously singing along to was "Let 'Em In." Faintly stored like a snapshot faded by time, I can see him singing it on some variety show, played late at night while I was supposed to be sleeping but instead lay in the door of my room watching down the hall the glow of the jasminelive television in the dark.

Years later for my 22nd birthday a family friend came to visit R and I. She asked what I might want for a birthday gift. I immediately replied, "A Paul McCartney CD; greatest hits or something." Later in the week she came and she delivered. It remains one of my most played CD's and E claims Sir Paul composed the soundtrack of her earliest memories.

While listening to "Jet" I followed the lyrics. Feeling like a fool, I reached for the dictionary when I got to the second stanza. "Suffragette" wasn't one I recalled. Regardless if it carried intention or simply rhymed (and I think it was both), I realized that I either didn't know much or didn't pay much attention in high school, or did the bored, male coaches somehow skim women's suffrage?

At the time I was employed by an elderly couple to clean their home once a week. Mrs. Williamson hired me for $15, and paid me not only in three fives every Thursday, but in the education of a young woman in the history of her gender. She had never had ; and while we sometimes shared things of depth and connection that surpassed our age difference, without specifically asking me, I understood that there was still a level of respect to maintain, so I never asked why.

Mrs. Williamson had worked in a time when women didn't. She married late and to be very involved in the women's college in which she was employed. Eventually I learned that she had four sisters and that they were all somehow ahead of their time.

We would engage in conversation while I dusted the living room that hadn't, and never did have, dust. 1992 was an election year and I was surprised to learn that Mrs. Williamson was a staunch Democrat. Between sweeping the area rugs, and dust mopping the aging oak floors, we talked about Bill Clinton and George H. W. and Ross Perot. I learned over scrubbing her kitchen floor that she was of the Quaker persuasion but hadn't been raised with any specific religious catechises. As they didn't go upstairs anymore, I rarely had anything to clean, other than the bathroom, and occasionally when they were expecting a guest, the spare bedroom. Then Mrs. Williamson would step out of her wheelchair, determinedly climb the stairs one at a time and insist on helping me change the linens where our conversations would continue on other current events and she would slowly, through nouns and verbs and adjectives that passed the lips wrinkled by time, somehow connect the past to the very day in which we were standing.

I sensed she began to anticipate my arrival, and my hunger for her knowledge and gentle friendship. I once loaded her chair in my little station wagon and we went to see The Firm. She began to pass along paperbacks she had enjoyed, and one day, I found upon my arrival a new cassette player on the end table. Glen Miller moved me through the rooms while Mr. Williamson napped in his usual chair, and she typed on an old Underwood, her weekly correspondence.

When I found out I was pregnant, I shared the ultrasound photo with her. Through her myopic eyes, she made out the arms, the hands; "my goodness, look at the fingers." The revelation of the fetal age being 10 weeks, the average time a is aborted, Mrs. Williamson, a long time supporter of abortion, startled. I don't know if her mind ever changed, but I do know that in that moment of realization, that I was leaving her with something she didn't, in all her wisdom, know and now did.

That pregnancy, that , yielded A, who was named for both the only woman noted in the Bible for her wisdom and beauty, and another who, in the simple admonition in a letter to her husband to "remember the ladies" when he went off to construct the constitution of a newly free, rebel republic, became the initial champion of recognizing women as equal citizens. I learned of this woman's polite plea in one of my many talks with Mrs. Williamson.

On this date, in 1920, Congress finally heard and "remembered the ladies" in passing Amendment 19 to the United States Constitution granting women the right to vote.

Mrs. Williamson once shared a recipe for meat loaf typed on a 3x5 index card using her old manual. She never demanded Mr. Williamson cook dinner. She seemed content to prepare and cook the food they would eat together in the small kitchen just as she always had. I think she figured a meal or two or three thousand in her lifetime was manageable, but not having the right to vote, to work, to get an education, simply was not.

I think often of her and the weekly dialogue that passed between us. I hope to pass on a bit of that balance of life to my own girls, and maybe one day, to a young woman that comes to clean when I am no longer.

How do you spell relief?

I am a hand washer. You know, I don't touch the faucet, nor the towel dispenser or door handle in public restrooms. I actually am quite pleased when the door to the restroom opens out to get in-- this means that I don't have to touch it with my clean hands or contribute to even more decimation of trees by using an extra paper towel simply to exit.

On a trip back to Missouri last fall, the closer we got to our motherland, the more bathrooms we found lacking in cowboy hats. You know, those paper toilet seat covers provided for your protection by the management? Either the Midwest is less suspicious by nature, or more stupid. Perhaps the answer is that they are just cheaper and think that if a person doesn't want to sit, they don't have to, or they can just squat.

Squat. Not a pleasant sounding word, nor a pleasant experience when you visit the chaturbate rooms. Back in the day, before Cowboy Hats were an option, squatting was the only way to go without touching the seat. Let me tell you, pregnant with two ounces of liquid threatening to explode out of you and having to squat to be sanitary is no thrill. It is at times necessary, but so is post-squat clean-up. See, one simply cannot maintain personal hygiene (squatting) without some accountability. Simply said: be thoughtful and give a swipe to the spray on the seat. Nothing is more disgusting than one of my little girls going into a stall, sitting, and then saying, "Ewwww, mommy, this seat is wet." I must collect myself, stifle my dry heaves, and come in and take care of your mess on my 's backside.

And since we are on the subject of cleanliness, may I ask something of you mums of little boys? I understand taking your young son into the women's restroom. Really, I do. If I had a boy, he would've accompanied me into the ladies loo, too. However, make sure you take care of the drip from the hose? Know what I mean? Junior is helpless, and cute, but his dribble isn't.

There, I feel so relieved.

First and Fourteen

Tomorrow my first born will be fourteen. Fourteen. I keep thinking of it in terms of how little time I have left with her, that day-to-day time that allows me to quietly watch her. I swear I can see her growing, like time-lapse photography. I see her cheeks rising like the tide; her body lengthening as the afternoon shadows; her mind wrapping itself around the world, selectively embracing and carefully rejecting theories and philosophies she finds reasonable or repugnant.

She has a wonderful balance of compassion and justice, logic and emotion, value and frugality, of faith and intellect. She was the first to fill my womb; nurse from my breast; the first one in whom I saw my own eyes and toes, heard my own laugh. In seconds breathed slowly over years, months, days, minutes, I am seeing them become her own distinct characteristics, changing from pieces of me and her father to the wholeness of her.

And to be a whole person is what I most desire for her. Happy Birthday, . I love you more than I will ever be able to express.

Composition

Tonight I listened to Joel Long read selections of his poetry at a creative writing conference that the university is presenting. His writing gently grasps you and before you are quite aware of how you arrived, you find yourself in the middle of places that seem to you only dreamt of; places both real and imagined, or so unreal they could only have been conjured by the fervor of fury or besotted of the small things our aging minds collect from hood.

I was immediately intrigued when I heard that the title of one of his collections is Chopin's Preludes. For each of Chopin's 24 Preludes, he has provided his own accompaniment. He has produced art as fine as the one whom he interprets. We spoke afterwards and I told him how I have now infected my daughters with love for Chopin and that when they were small, I would frequently play Chopin's Ballades for their passage into slumber. As we talked, he wrote. I paid and walked the spangled sidewalks to the parking lot.

When I returned home, I decided to read his written rendering of my favored composer while also listening to Martha Agerich perform the magic of the music. Opening the book to the title page, I found inscribed: "For Rae, for listening at night time...when the are nearly asleep." And, For tonight, I thought, when I am not nearly, but very near sleep myself.

Night Vision

I dreamt last night that I was sitting in a classroom. Before me was a test that I hadn't studied for, hadn't even anticipated. In fact, I had no idea how or why I was in this place. I had no pen or pencil, but fortunately was wearing clothes. I began to cry uncontrollably, as a might over something easily remedied.

The previous night my sleep was filled with (and this is frequently the case) my dilemma of either climbing a set of stairs, steep, narrow and without a handrail, to get to the top, or to give into my fear of falling and not see what was beyond. K was once again a toddler, standing at the top and attempting to make her way down. I was unnerved by her fearlessness obviously grounded in seeing me at the bottom; her absolute trust that because I was there, she would be safe. She tripped and fell through the space. I caught her by the torso between my feet and pulled her through. Just as her face emerged above the mahogany steps, I saw another way to reach the top. To my left was a landing, easily managed with a short hop and a stairway secured with support on both sides. I instructed K to hold onto my neck, to wrap her pudgy legs around my waist. A careful measure with my eye made confident my decision to jump. We landed. I then placed K at my side and we climbed to the top, woven together in the middle by entwined fingers, tethered to the guardrail by hands, large and small, with the fragility of paper cut-outs, and the determination of a mother's love and a 's trust.