God shed his grace on thee.
i cry when my kids sing patriotic songs... i do... they are so utterly innocent and beautiful, those songs...
purple mountains Majesty...amber waves of grain...
this place is so wild and wonderful... and so utterly chaotic and misguided. and i don't even mean to suggest that i should be the guide to realign what has gone awry but, really? this place?
full of people who call themselves pro-life but spew hatred, or seem to find glee in a celebrity who turns out to be a murderer, politicians who sell their votes for money, judges who turn aside from justice.
people who seem to be able to type 'murder' without a sense of the deep, deep, universal wrong that exists there. we should stutter.
but if we are all perfect, designed by God? what then? the haters have a place? the killers? it hurts my heart a little bit to try to stretch to have compassion for spewers of spite, hypocrisy, oppression....
and yet what else is there? by giving up the fight, i become the other side.. i stop seeing humanity in the mass, i lose something of my own...
i feel a bereavement, it is an overcast summer day... and so the morning goes.
Thursday, June 27, 2013
America, America. ..
Posted by Kate Hall at 11:58 AM 0 comments
Labels: anger management, god, wahwah, weaponry
Tuesday, June 25, 2013
Today, and Rumford
its my birthday today, i'm 39. the baby with her one tooth is asleep on my lap. i'm concerned about the life quality of the caterpillar that the kids have 'rescued' and want it to be released. i'm afraid to interupt my sister-in-law and the kid's exploration time. it may be that i want nature in 'nature's place'... or that five year old fingers are a danger to us all. . .
tired of badguy mothering.
there are many towns called Rumford around here, in a four or five state range, and i'm not sure why, but do like the sound of it. sounds bucolic, like a cheery town of white paint and picket fences, cute coffee shops and friendly old folk. the truth is that, of course, the bucolic has an underbelly, always does, its the poop smell from the pastured beef. . . the flies on the strange white bush by the back door... its worth it just to say it a few times. its a good word.
its my birthday. i'm sort of hungry. since its my birthday, i am free of guilt and will eat a pint of blueberries for my snack. can share, or not, as i am free of guilt and mothering as sacrifice ideology. would that i could wrap my mind about that one not needing to be a birthday wish. would. word.
39. hum.
today is the last day of school. we celebrate with dinners with pink lemonade and straws, kids menus, no reading required... backpack retirements... splashes in a wading pool that do the trick, thankfully.
my oldest turns eight in a week. eight. somehow the momentum of that one feels as grand as the 39. and i do feel grand, its an almost impossible feat to truly make my birthday irrelevant, regardless of the wildly changing experience of it, the kid-centeredness of its activity... sometimes the day, it is enough to bring me back to myself, that recognizable person who makes decisions for my own wishes, my own breath, for reasons of my own, whether i can verbalize/make them conscious or not.
i do feel solitary, but i remember that the world is mine, my solitude being given to me on this day, as i, as well all, crown... one way or another.
kingdom calling, and that sort of thing.
happy birthday, you.
Monday, June 17, 2013
Count 'em. do it. i did.
it has been ten days since the first vomit. and all but the Father joined in.
i say, happy father's day!
the middle had it almost the entirety of five days and even now is napping to recover from our first venture out.
thank you target, for your bottles of gatorade and your party pack of birthday invitations. we applaud your stockage.
i'm exhausted. my mother is STILL in the hospital and i haven't been to see her because of the risk of passing what we have to someone already compromised and to her spouse. . . . . she gets out tomorrow by golly and i might just wait til she's at home. if there is a full 24 hour period without vomit i can not promise but at least be hopeful that it is done.
sheesh.
i'm going to go drink some red gatorade now. doing my own restockage. whatever happened to jake ryan anyhow? man, he was good. he was a boy who could rock the levi's.
:)
Posted by Kate Hall at 1:54 PM 2 comments
Labels: movies and motherhood, sick, sleep deprivation at the extreme
Friday, June 14, 2013
lint
ball of lint, sitting on the dryer. that is me, formless, bits of flotsam and jetsam ravelled and whurled.
all three of the kids has had a stomach virus this week, still happening, in fact. though i have two asleep on separate sofas while the dryer cranks out a dry, if not clean, towel. dryness seems to be a matter of importance.
the midnight dance between sides of the bed was impressive, and i am now dropped into a remembrance of the first four months of my firstborns life, and the truth of 'no-sleep' and whatever sort of deprivation that caused in me. depravity, perhaps. some relationship therein.
i smell like pee and vomit, and i don't know if the pee is mine or not. it is allergy season after all. i have had three children and while incontinence is not really my problem, it is hard to battle a marathon of sneezing.
my mother is heavily sedated and so i don't visit her at my leisure, though my stomach has its own rumblings and my spirit is just lying out on the back deck waiting for my attentions. i can't decide if i want to go out there or not.
i worry for my dad, i worry for a shift in my psyche about aging andparents and children and my spot in the universe. i am beyond annoyed that i am almost forty and i'm one of those women who feels 'lost' a great deal. beyond.
i suppose there is some use to be found in that dryer lint. one can compost it, you know.
i'm going to watch the end of sixteen candles. yes i am.
Posted by Kate Hall at 11:05 AM 0 comments
Labels: aging, mothering, self, sick, sleep deprivation at the extreme
Thursday, June 13, 2013
nursery rhymes, throw up and warriors go to the hospital.
the baby's throwing up, the baby's throwing up, hi. ho. the dairy, oh. the baby's throwing up.
this might keep me from visiting my mother in the hospital today, and i am sort of distraught. can i call my mother-in-law to watch the tiny throw up? how can i leave her in her first time of need?
but my mother is in the hospital again, second time in as many weeks. and i am sort of distraught.
scratch the sort of.
last time i was more cool and calm and centered in the 'just get better' and not worry-d. this time i am finding it harder to gather my cool and calm and my self-counsel is falling on deaf ears, as luck would have it...
this is the second stomach to explode from the 'nursery' and i'm running all cylinders on fumes. i told my mother yesterday, as i prepared her to go to the ER and she was so upset... ' remember how true it rang for C? when i told him he was safe, because he was a child of God?.... so are you. ' and i felt like a warrior when i said it. i could almost feel my body swelling up.
i wish i could carry that certainty with me every minute, but evidently, no. in order to swell up and be uber powerful, once must understand intimately deflation.
so be it.
- someone tell me how to stop spending so much time wishing things were different, aye?
Sunday, June 9, 2013
Summerstock
wherein we take stock of the beginning of the summer. ..
our summer guests have arrived, for the unknown number of days and the unknown number of nights. a sister-in-law and a neice/twin (miss f.) to my own very five year old boy. . . my seven flits and floats and gets more and more himself every day, but frequently feels the lack of singular playmate while his brother is off with miss f. He recovers slowly from more vomit than a girl can shake a fist at...
and the baby rolls along, her own song getting stronger too. . .
nobody wants to hear what i have to say.
i don't want to hear what anyone has to say.
i spent an hour or two with my mother this afternoon, swinging on the hammock, eating watermelon,
delivering the soup -not to the hammock- and talking about what health could entail. she goes along with a 'procedure' on tuesday to determine if the mystery of her belly can be solved.
i have been spending a lot of time with mysteries lately, those things which, in truth, will not be solved. . . and how to make space for this gapping in the logic line. . . and the boys are fixated on what will be when they die. will they need brains? are their souls in the brains? makes sense, right?
so we twit from 'shut the mind' to 'heed the mind' and race ourselves sick.
we have two weeks left of school and a dazed approach to finishing them while the tides rise and fall.
ah. shoosh.
Posted by Kate Hall at 3:41 PM 1 comments
Labels: anger management, fathering, raising boys, writing
Wednesday, June 5, 2013
grapes. say it with me, slowly.. grapes.
What I have learned. . . in all the mysteries that still exist, that fill our days with wonder and incredulity...:
I'm a good nurse. I'm gentle, and patient and it is nice that other people can see that too. It gives me hope and curiousity about what i will do when my kids don't need me to (oh, moan) be there every second. I don't need her to be there every second, but My mom doesn't have cancer, its as definite as a thing can be. and i'm very glad i get more seconds. grapes are an excellent snack if you don't know what is going on in your stomach's arena. gladiators? animal sacrifices? stretching and moaning? grapes.
nurses are more comforting than doctors, but doctors have more information about the long hauls. i wish those two would get together more, they both lack something in the end.
having a very intense focus for a week is good, but i'm spinning around now, that she doesn't need me as much and my intensity is dissipating like her weakness... slow and steady.
i've tried to give my kids chicken pox this month, last month whatever, and i don't think it worked but am still waiting... they haven't been vaccinated because i think getting the actual virus is better than a shot and a manufactured substance getting shot into their veins at such a tender age. if they don't get it by 10, i'll shoot them up before puberty. i was sort of torn about trying to infect them on purpose, it seems to be counter to all the mothering i've done so far, it sort of hurt... but, ah. it is done.
the school just notified me they are spraying for mosquitos on the 7th, before school.. when you read the information on what they are spraying, they say it is safe because the sprayers have liscenses from the state. that is what they say. well, huh. if i keep him home that day, am i a hysteric?
i should probably go get some grapes. i now have a whole lot of time to spend in the frittering.
grapes.
Saturday, June 1, 2013
Meditating when you can't breathe.
might be one of the most important times to do it, reminding myself to breathe over here.
my mom's in the hospital. they're having a hard time getting her meds straightened out. it'll be fine once that is done. (well, thats what we thought, turns out not to be exactly right. not that fine. we're waiting. )
hubs and i are not very good. struggle struggle sisboom bah. i still want him around when the shit he doesn't cause hits the fan. i do.
it is very hot here. like a swelter. a shit flinging swelter.
sitting in meditation with a sweaty sleeping baby laid across my legs did not prove very fruitful for me, but did remind me to chuck out the mind which carries on conversations again and again with nobody but my mind, tricky thing.
so the overripe is still a sticky, tricky fruit. a fruit.
a tricky one.
very.