memories – Page 7 – Women Who Think Too Much by Jeanne Marie

From the newsletter, Women who Think Too Much, 2000

DAUGHTER, MOTHER AND GRANDMOTHER. ALL WROTE ABOUT AGING, WITHOUT DISCUSSING IT WITH EACH OTHER.
A COINCIDENCE OR THE TWILIGHT ZONE?

THINGS I LEARNED THE HARD WAY
1. Johnson’s Stretch Mark Cream doesn’t really prevent or remove the one million stretch marks motherhood is bound to deliver, although it does keep each and every stretch mark incredibly soft!
2. When the man in your young life tells you that you’re much too pretty to wear make up, he’s really saying, “Go scrub your face or someone may actually take a second look at you!”
3. Never call your mother for a ride home, from the 24 hour Wal-Mart, because you locked your keys in the car. Not unless you want a lecture about shopping alone after midnight!
4. Don’t call your mother when she’s writing in Computerville; she won’t even remember the phone call!
5. If your mother is a writer, choose your words very carefully, because if she’s like my mother, she’ll hear a story in every syllable!
6. Never tell her she’s too old to have a life!
LOVE YA MOM, JODIE

TIME
An old woman
Sits by herself
Staring at her past
Arranged on a shelf.
Time is money
Or so they say
Time stands still
Then slips away.
A baby is born
His first sound
An angry cry,
A rose in bloom
is ready to die.
Time waits for no one
Then just marches on,
It goes by too fast
Then it takes too long.
by Jeanne Marie

THOUGHTS ON GROWING OLDER
With a smile on my face I meet the dawn
Tomorrow’s not here and yesterday’s gone.
I have just today to live my life
So I’ll try my best to keep out strife.
I’ll count my blessings, one at a time
And the first, and the best, is that
today is mine.
My youth has gone into the night
And old age is no longer a fright,
I face the mirror with eyes away
And don’t see the wrinkles or the hair
that’s gone gray.
I only see the life within
Greeting this old face with a grin,
I say “Old girl, you’ve tried your best,
so relax, and let God handle the rest.”
by Grace (my Mom)

Unconquered Guilt by Jodie Lynne (1994)

UNCONQUERED GUILT
She wearily stumbles on past
Blinded as survival fogs her path.
Her broken soul aching to reach
Beyond this endless haze,
Desperate to free
What she can no longer see.
Burning with pain
Her aimless arms reaching,
Pulling together strength enough
For one last try.
Fear takes over, for at last
She has felt beyond her gaze,
Fallen into a piece of past.
Even as a small hand clings to her own
Ever so quickly fear becomes shame
As the soft little hand slips from her hold,
Letting smoke turn to roaring flame, and
Still, the shadowed room remains so cold.
As her worn body falls
With unexpected relief
She gives in to the memory
Lies down with the unconquered grief.
One last tear streaks her face
As a terrible blackness drags
Her broken soul to another time,
Another place. A woman-child,
An abusive man, three years dead
Who lives on in nightmares,
That dance through their heads
A little boy, his crying face,
Another time, another place.
Jodie Lynne, 1994

Middle Child (Jodie Lynne)

Middle child, where do you fit in?
You fought for my attention
but did you ever win?
You surely have it now
although painfully gained.
You capture me with crisis
then, I shake loose again.
Middle child, I know you well,
you speak to me of your dreams
your fears and your babies lost.
People judge you harshly
but once you lived beneath
my heartbeat…
so, together we pay the cost.
I can’t catch you when you fall
but I’ll bandage up your knees
just like when you were five
and asphalt tore through your jeans.
“Don’t run,” I’d holler out the door
as off to play you’d tear.
You never heeded my warnings
took on the world without a fear.
Twenty-two this month and still…
my warnings fly into the wind
blowing every which way
following you aimlessly around.
Perhaps you’d stop to listen
if you knew that my heart bleeds
each time your knees hit the ground.
My daughter, my middle child
I loved you when you didn’t know
when my hands were full with others
or when my feelings didn’t show.
We’ve had our ups and downs
but I’ll never let you go.
Middle child, where do you fit in?
My quintessence has a
special niche for you
tucked beneath my ribs
right where you’ve always been.
by Jeanne Marie, 1997

One thing I ask from the Lord… Art by Michelle Marie and Jeanne Marie

One thing I ask from the Lord.

Sometimes I see Angels dancing by Michelle Marie

Sometimes I see Angels dancing.

I find beauty where it is~in the bridges. Michelle Marie

I find beauty where it is~in the bridges.

all of me~Jeanne Marie

all of me~Jeanne Marie.

She re-wrote her story because she believes in miracles~by jeanne marie & michelle marie

She re-wrote her story because she believes in miracles~.

If I could…

If I could live in the words I write, I’d write a story where my heart was never broken.

Not Beaten After All

This yellow hibiscus
has been rained on
and it has been beaten
senseless by the wind.
It has been bent
almost to the ground
and it fought storms
to stand back up again.
It stands proud and
yes, it stands tall.
It was shaken
and it was bruised
But not beaten after all.

Grammy, how long is three years?

I REMEMBER…I KNOW

I REMEMBER
Remember when you used to bring flowers home for me?
You would walk in the door after work with that sexy smile
Holding a dozen yellow and pink roses, for no reason at all.
Lunch box in your right hand, my flowers in your left
“Baby, Honey, Sweetie?” Names for me you would gently call.
I REMEMBER
Remember when we took a nap before dinner
Because we were too needing to wait for bedtime?
Sometimes all we did was giggle, snuggle and kiss
Sometimes the snuggling led to so much more
Loved your kisses, most of all, that’s what I miss.
I REMEMBER
Remember when we danced, how you held my body close?
So close my mama said it was indecent, your hands caressing
My back all the way down to my…well you know.
All my friends were jealous because with every move
With every touch, it was obvious you loved me so.
I KNOW
I know it is those memories that keep me trapped here
Because for years no loving touch have you been showing.
Years and years of silent and lonely days, dark and empty nights.
You buy me anything you think I want, when all I want is you.
Now, I cry myself to sleep, alone, after each mean and crazy fight.
I KNOW
I know we had something so intense, so strong
A love only one of us could have destroyed.
I know, dear God, I know, the exact moment it happened
Exactly when my handsome hero, my Marlboro Man,
Became a man who left me hanging over a black void.
I REMEMBER
Remember all the times I left our house, boxes in my hands?
Four times, with all I owned, swearing that this time was the last.
Remember how we both cried; remember how we felt so lost?
So home I came and tried again, to find your love, to find your heart.
Only one leaving left, so if you just sit and watch me hurting again…
I promise you my last.

Daddy’s Bottomless Black Pit

Daddy’s Bottomless Black Pit
Clean my face, wipe dripping tears of blood that come from deep within. Born black and blue and forced to pay for my daddy’s kin. He was raped and abused, treated like a piece of shit. Little baby girl born to that unhealed victim, I had no place to grow, to learn or to run. So, I lived beneath the ground cradled ungently, in my Daddy’s arms, no place I fit…except deep down inside my Daddy’s bottomless, black pit.

Codependency

Codependency

Loved you until I was drained, empty
nothing left of the love as I recall,
refuse to lose my mind, so it is over
bruised brain won’t survive another fall.

Driven quite mad, aching for your touch
spirit crushed by your negative weight
splintering my weakened, damaged bones.
Set free? Set free? Shit, it is too late.

Too late to be an innocent little girl
too late to chase the passions of 17
too late to write that frigging book
but all my floors are sparkling clean.

My womb has left, cut from my body
so, too late to be a better mother
loved ones from my hands I dropped
always ran, hid beneath the covers.

Some other day, some other love
some other life, any but my own
thought I had time to find happy
old came first, please leave me alone.

Hopes shattered and then returned
laid to bleed in my hollow heart
the doors I had no will to open
never found the strength to depart.

Windows I painted closed, proud…
I held my ground…I took a stand
never seeing what would be forfeited
manipulations, I did not understand.

Never added up the sinister expense
of investing in a love already lost
relying on vows of a better tomorrow
never analyzed the enormous cost.

Driven by deceits, the knife sliced deep
guided by the sharp edges of yesterday
writing a check for the lies I believed
emptied the piggy bank, how will I pay?

For Jodie Lynne

Angels Among Us…

“Oh I believe there are angels among us.
Sent down to us from somewhere up above.
They come to you and me in our darkest hours.
To show us how to live, to teach us how to give.
To guide us with a light of love.” Alabama

Blessed with a day of love before my daughter goes to prison…thank you for all your prayers. I feel your love.

Doing Time…

I publish tons of personal stuff on my blog, but I wasn’t going to write about my thirty-nine year-old daughter going to prison, not because I’m ashamed of her, but because the hurt is so enormous.
I have made mistakes. Some that will haunt me until the day I die. Everyone makes mistakes. We all pay for our mistakes too, whether it’s through Karma, prison, divorce, broken hearts, family members who never speak to us again or whatever. You don’t have to wait for an official Judgment Day.
I believe that every day on Earth is Karma’s Judgment Day.
My heart has been sliced, diced and pureed, but much of it I can blame on myself and my bad decisions, decisions made from fear and insecurity.
And just when I think that I have bottomed out on heartbreaks, my middle child, who has also made bad choices, gets herself in enough small trouble with the law to end up with a very big sentence.
Twenty-years, three in and seventeen-years of probation. If she sneezes, she will do twenty-years. And she is a sneezer. She received that sentence for non-violent, minor crimes.
Meanwhile, rapists, child molesters and murderers do less time. They get out and do it again. Sometimes within a week. The man who killed my daughter’s first husband had six convictions for drunk driving, no license and his blood tested positive for alcohol and drugs at 8:a.m.
He went through a red light taking down my son-in-law’s motorcycle that was stopped at the red light.
I had to call in the news before he was even charged. He did fifteen months in prison.
I am not excusing my daughter’s crimes, but doesn’t rehab make more sense for an addict who hasn’t found sobriety?
The worst part is that we couldn’t afford a lawyer and justice is for people who can afford a lawyer. Take my word for it, because that is one theory you don’t want to test.
And I get to fly 2000 miles on Monday and then drive three hours to deliver her to the prison. There isn’t a big enough box of tissues for this one, but I am grateful for the opportunity because I want to stand by her and I want her to see her mama’s face loving her as she walks into prison.
I keep giving her to God and He has saved her life so many times and I am grateful. She has thrown away a hundred chances to turn her life around, so maybe prison is the only way to save her life again. He sees the whole picture and I trust Him, but it’s an extremely painful solution.
Seriously. I have no clue how I am going to make it through that day or the days that follow, because she won’t be the only one doing time. We are connected and she holds my heart, so we are both doing time.

childhood is but a whisper then comes the living…

Another Chance

A homeless man and I crossed paths today
As he looked hopefully into my eyes
I’m ashamed to say, I looked away.
His angry face, his dirty, tattered clothes
they frightened me, although for all I know
I scared him with my new car, fancy clothes.
Jesus said He is the beggar at our door
He lives among the homeless in the street.
All day I fretted at what I hadn’t done
said hello or shared money so he could eat.
I used to roll down my window at the stop light
and hold out dollars to the countless homeless
and it always felt like doing that was right.
I stopped giving freely a few years ago
after I brought food and blankets to a family
holding signs that said, “We are hungry.”
and they turned my offerings away.
“We can only accept cash,” they said.
so I stopped giving without noticing
to the homeless after that rueful day.
Have I become so cynical and
and is it a million dollar business
as I have read? Maybe. I just don’t know.
A poor excuse even even to my ears
that all should pay for one group of cons
and my habit of giving should flip to no
when I had given joyously for so many years.
This man deserved a smile and kind words
and brave soul that I am, I looked away.
Now, I drive the streets seeking his face
and if I see him, I will do right by him today.

The proof is in the pictures…

My pictures are a memory I can hold in my hand. My kids always said, “No more pictures Mom,” but I snapped away. As they have grown older, they too snap up every moment with their cell phones. I like to think that I taught them to capture moments. Today is slipping by fast, the hour glass never rests. Yesterday is gone, tomorrow…just a hope, but my pictures are forever and they will exist long after I’m gone. Every picture in this collection has a story. Collecting them for this post has inspired me to make each of my kids a scrapbook instead of leaving behind hundreds of discs. I thought the only thing that I would leave them was my writing. These pictures reminded me that my life has been full of joy and laughter, tears and traumas, but most of all love. That is what I shall leave them. Love. The proof is in the pictures.
Here is an article my son Rick, wrote for me about pictures. I love this.
https://womenwhothinktoomuch.wordpress.com/2013/08/24/jeanne-marie-tagged-a-photo-of-you-today-600-am-by-last-ditch-effort/