CLARAFIED BUTTER

Picture it. A young woman is having a baby shower for her first child. Her request is not for material things but an offering of something creative.  I tell my Mama the friend's request and she proceeds to ask me everyday for two weeks straight, what I have come up with as my creative offering. I am kinda thinking about it but not with her urgency. So she offers a beginning phrase and from there we craft a beautiful poem. She then tells me that she believes the young lady and I will have a closer relationship, loosely based off our shared experience in motherhood. I scoff at her initially because 'motherhood' has been much lonelier than I imagined it. Soon after the baby shower, my Mama dies. Soon after that the young lady has her baby boy. We become closer through our shared mothering but also in our story telling. She helps me tell my story, she encourages me and believes in me as an artist. She creates safe spaces for me and my children, so I can explore the dark plac...

7/24/19 Sometimes I feel like I'm being selfish, how badly I want her back. I feel like our relationship was one-sided, and I was the benefactor in it. Then there are days when I don't think of her at all. I am completely distracted with life, those days are rare but they occur more often now. Until I get a piece of mail with her name on it or a note from Thrivent, a life insurance company she invested into for herself and I. She loved me so much that she was even preparing for my afterlife. It makes me feel like she's still taking care of me. Especially when I cook dinner, I channel her then for sure. I make all her same faces when I'm mixing and stirring, when I can tell something is going to turn out yummy. I miss our talks every day. She was my person. We just knew each other so well and it was only getting better! I  started taking her for granted I think . I was only just starting to grow up. I still needed her though, just less and less. Still stings. I had s...

All of my son's classmates rode on a school bus everyday, except for Izzy. We live so close to school that we are able to get him there easily without the use of outside transportation. So one day, when I came to pick Izzy up from school, his best friend saw me walk in and proceeded to shout, "Izzy, your bus is here! Your bus is here!" He then grabbed my hand and brought me to Izzy saying the exact same thing at least ten more times! I died laughing each and every one of those times. The memory of this moment still makes me chuckle. Israel has always wanted to ride the bus like his classmates so this summer because of the extended school year program he was able to finally get the chance! I remember his first day waiting for the bus to arrive to the house, he was so anxious and excited, when it finally came he didn't even look back to say 'good bye' or anything! He rushed onto the bus and found his seat. I was so proud of him and nervous at the sam...

The thing about grief that I'm noticing is how whole passages of time, that I know I lived and definitely 'mothered' through have been lost. When I try to recall those first few years, I often come up blank. I feel like I have cheated my son from something my daughter got to experience fully, an attentive and fully present mama. When I think hard enough during my pregnancy with him, it was grief from beginning to the end. He has only just had his first birthday party this year. It's as if I have been going through the motions his whole life and am only just noticing important things now and he's FIVE! This grief has been tough. I was not prepared to lose time because of it! Like really, my daughter had to convince me that she has been in 4 schools. I only recalled 3 but damn if it took my husband to remind me of her first school experience, months after Ma had passed. I had completely blocked it from my memory. I was knee deep IN it then. It's just heartb...

I believe worry is an inherited affliction and that I may have gotten my propensity to worry from my Grandma. As her worry was epigentically passed down to me. I have indeed passed this worry to my offspring. When I was a kid, my biggest fear was something bad happening to my Mama. I always felt like if she died I would die too, just drop dead with her last breath because I just didn't believe I could survive the hurt. In a way I didn't survive it. The death I experienced was metaphorical. It was a death of a certain kind of familiar that only she could provide, i.e my life with her at the center of it. Ma was not a worrisome woman, in fact she was the opposite. She often stepped out on faith and did things that even made her family think she was strange. As a parent I notice the traits of worry in my daughter. She's very inquisitive, so she's always investigating and asking questions about things that interest her. However once she learns the new information sh...

My first year of motherhood was an opportunity to relive my youth but with my own child. So we went everywhere, did everything and lived our absolute best lives! I would take photographs of everything and share them with my friends and family. Once, while recounting a trip to the farm at a family gathering, a comment was made about our safety while at the farm, something about the proximity of the chickens and other animals to my child while there. I think they asked what would I do if a goat or a chicken were to attack her. Before I could even think of a response, I heard my Mama say, "You shouldn't be worried about India, you should be worried about the chicken! She knows how to take care of our baby." When she said it I was taken aback. Honestly, I hadn't even thought about the scenario of a rogue chicken becoming territorial and hurting her. It could've easily happened and been something I worried about that could've deterred me from visiting again but...

It's been a challenging couple weeks. First, my baby girl got strep throat and had to be out of school for a week. Then directly after that me and my whole family got a mysterious respiratory infection-like illness that mainly had us coughing up copious amounts of phlegm. It was awful because initially it was painful to cough or talk or breathe even! Then it took away our appetite and our ability to taste food! We still don't have our appetites' quite back yet but not being able to delight in the foods that bring us comfort? Despicable! So we were out for a good two weeks, whatever it was I never wanna see her again! Now we are dealing with allergy season and her relentless assault on my son's eyes and face! Not even Benadryl seems to be enough, his poor eyes are so red and runny. He has the stuffy nose and sneezing, needless to say my Boo has the blues and I feel so frustrated with myself! I knew from last year how serious his allergies were and I had bought everythi...