mother – Page 2 – Women Who Think Too Much by Jeanne Marie

The Hand That Rocks The Cradle…My college essay on motherhood, 1994

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Are you crazy? Not yet? Well, you can always try motherhood! It worked for me. Okay, so most women love babies. Women are attracted to babies due to a very basic, maternal instinct. Reason and logic are only slightly involved in this picture. The longing to have a baby is so strong in most women that those who can’t conceive are devastated. Babies are so precious, all soft and cuddly, and they’re even more adorable when they start to smile and coo.

Additionally, there’s no sweeter fragrance than the aroma a baby sends forth, fresh from his bath, swaddled in a Downy soft blanket. Combine that with the essence of Johnson’s baby powder and rare would be the woman whose hormones could resist the “maternal urge.” You visit your friend and her new baby one afternoon. When your husband comes through the door that evening you say, “Oh honey, I want to have a baby!”

Well, I’m here to set the story straight and reveal some well-kept secrets about motherhood. I’ll tell you secrets that will expose the reality behind the charming, family portraits from Wal-Mart, those costly, cheap pictures we love to hang on our living room walls. The things that women who are already caught never tell to the women who are still free. Misery loves company and we can’t bear to see the smug expression on your faces as you say, “My kids are going to be different.”

Let’s start with the pregnancy. One night, you and the man of your dreams make wild, passionate love and as a result you become pregnant. (Sometimes, this occurs even when you’re using three different types of birth control. What a miracle!)

Pregnancy. An awkward word, don’t you think? Rightly so, because in about eight months you will be as awkward as your worst nightmare. By the ninth month, you can’t sleep more than twenty minutes without waking up to go to the bathroom. You’ll forget what your feet looked like. Shaving your legs will be a fond memory. You’ll be praying for labor pains and once they start, you’ll be praying for the strength to get out of those stirrups and kill the man who did this to you. As you begin to scream swears in the labor room (swears your husband has never even heard before) little does he realize, you are saving the superlative curses. They will come out of your mouth, unbidden, in the delivery room.

You’ll think, thank God, as the nurse lays the baby on your stomach. The doctor lets your husband (if he hasn’t fainted or run away) cut the baby’s umbilical cord and you both count the ten, tiny fingers and toes. One nurse takes the baby off to be bathed and another nurse kneads and beats on your stomach. (I kid you not!) They wheel you back to your room and you fall asleep thinking, it’s over. (No, I’m afraid it’s just beginning.)

You’ll be so sick of maternity clothes (designed by men who have never carried forty extra pounds around their waist) that you’ll give them to the first pregnant woman you see. Even if it’s your husband’s old girlfriend. Your husband might gently ask, “Why don’t you keep them for the next time, sweetheart?” and that’s when he will learn about post-partum blues. I don’t think I’ll give all the secrets away; let’s save the “baby blues” for a surprise.

The baby is home. Your friends and your family have left. Your husband has gone back to work. At that moment, reality rears it’s ugly head. You are out of diapers (the baby has soiled twenty-four since yesterday), so you decide to get dressed and go to the store. “Whose jeans are these?” you ask. “Why can’t I get my jeans up over my hips?” You double check the closet to make sure these are your clothes. In tears, you pull on an old pair of stretch pants and one of your husband’s sweatshirts. Get used to them. It’s the uniform of motherhood, and will soon be as comfortable as an old friend.

The baby pooped his last diaper while you were rummaging in the closet, and as you pick him up, he regurgitates down the front of your sweatshirt. (That’s part of the uniform.) The fragrance that your friend’s baby radiated the day you held it, is lacking in your infant. She forgot to tell you that babies don’t stay clean. You sit down, crying, and you call your mother. She brings diapers and advice. “Save your tears for when he is a teenager,” she tells you. “This is easy, compared to that.” You don’t believe her. You think maybe she’s just being sarcastic. (However; years from now her words will haunt you, as your child goes to school, learns to drive and chooses his own friends.)

I think you’ve got the general picture concerning babies. Let’s move on to my personal favorite. The terrible two’s. This usually strikes when the child is between one and two years old and lasts until he moves out. At the onset of this natural childhood disaster, he learns to talk and how to say “NO!” He may forget how to poop on the potty, how to pick up his toys or how to eat with a spoon, but he will never forget how to say, “NO!”

He will get into your record collection, he will get into your books and he will get into your child-proof cabinets. He will climb into the refrigerator at 6:00 a.m., but he will never climb willingly into a warm bath! He will climb into your bed when he is sick and vomit on you as you sleep. “Momma, I’m sick,” will be his excuse. ( Just because the child is six years old and knows where the bathroom is, don’t expect him to use it.)

Young couples fall in love and get married, usually thinking that having children will be the ultimate expression of their love. Survival of the human race is ensured by our urge to reproduce and by our raging hormones. However; if given a choice, how many women would actually go back and do it all again? Ann Landers took a survey on that subject and was shocked at the response. The majority of people who answered the survey voted no, they would decide not to have children, if they had it to do over.

Somewhere, there is a perfect mother who has raised healthy, well-adjusted children. She has balanced the demands of motherhood and a part-time job. She has never had any major problems with her teenagers. She has no guilt or regrets, and she is happy that she gave up her life for her children. When you find her, let me know, because I’d like to meet her.

Each child you bring into this world will brand you. My body bears the scars of my children’s births. I had three cesarean sections and my scars cover the area my bathing suit used to bare. (I’m not even going to discuss stretch marks.) I’ve been doomed to a one-piece suit for all eternity.

My heart and soul bear their own scars. Years of toddler temper tantrums, hyperactive children, teenage mutiny, rebellion, hard rock and rap music, they have all taken their toll. Clothes borrowed and never returned. Disappearing makeup. Teenage pregnancies that made me a premature grandmother. School meetings with various principals and teachers, meetings where I was made to feel like an incompetent mother. (As the years passed, I began to have my husband go to these meetings. They never yelled at him.) Motherhood strips you of your dignity, your rights and eventually your vocabulary.

Some women manage to save their brain and can take it out of storage after the last teenager moves out. With a little dusting, it can be restored to an adult brain. Warning: attempting this restoration with even one teenager still living at home can cause further damage! For example, when I asked my teenage son to turn down his stereo so I could do my college assignments, he told me, “You don’t need to go to school; you’re too old.”

What was he really saying? “I want my mother’s attention. I want her to cook me a big meal. I want her to clean my room and entertain me. Unless one of my friends comes by and then I’m out of here!”

He was also thinking, “You’re not a student; you’re my mother!” I was thinking, “You’re not too old to slap!”

Motherhood drains you, uses you up and leaves a huge hole in your heart when your children leave home. If your child gets pregnant or decides to abuse drugs, it will be considered your fault. Even if it isn’t your fault, you will eventually accept society’s diagnosis, because mothers are supposed to be perfect, in complete control. This theory does not allow for the fact that children have their own personality, outside influences and other people in their life.

When will your child become mature enough to thank you for all you’ve given him, given up for him? Usually, that doesn’t happen until he has children of his own. However; with daughters, you can be almost sure it will happen right after the birth of her first child. Maybe even during the delivery.

Sometimes, your husband leaves, long before the kids are grown. He has a choice. You do not. Your time, your energy and all of your resources will go into raising your children. Did I mention the mounds of laundry, the piles of dirty dishes and the mountains of meals you will cook? Well, that’s another story in itself.

There is a positive side to motherhood, but when your children are teenagers it’s hard to remember that fact. I enjoyed having babies and I loved staying home with them when they were small. As I watched my first grandson come into this world, I was overwhelmed with an incredible rush of love and excitement! It was breathtaking to see the miracle of his birth. My grandchildren are precious and by far the best gift motherhood has given me.

As I read Parents magazine the other day, I noticed that most of the articles concerned problems that arise when raising children and how to solve them. The title of this article really caught my eye: “Survival Guide for New Moms.”
So, even Parent’s magazine concedes, it’s a question of survival!

When you’re thinking about that beautiful baby you’d like to have, remember this advice–babies are easy to have, labor included, compared to the strenuous task of raising them. Your career will be motherhood, trust me. Everything else in your life will come second. I’m sure many women would disagree with my views on motherhood. But don’t even let them approach me, unless they have already raised at least one child.

Do I love my children? Yes, enormously. Would I choose to become a mother if I had a chance to start over? I’m not sure. I can’t picture my life without them in it, but my children needed so much more and I had so much less than what they needed.

Motherhood has taught me numerous valuable lessons. We learn how to raise our children by rock, hard experience and by the time we’ve developed the necessary skills, our children are grown-up and they have children of their own.

On the plus side, the experience does prepare us for grand-parenting.

Update, 04-21-2015
I have fourteen grandkids and three great-grandbabies. Their ages span from twenty-five-years old to four-months.

Happy Birthday, Jodie Lynne

April 18

Today is my younger daughter’s fortieth birthday. Since we couldn’t be together, we created a substitute plan. We would celebrate over the phone.

When she called me, we only talked about things that made us happy. We talked about her silky-haired Chihuahua that I am raising, Maggie Mae, we talked about other dogs that we have loved through the years and we spoke of our happy dreams, instead of our nightmares.

We talked about peanut butter and marshmallow fluff being her favorite birthday cake (today) and how grateful she was to have snacks in her locker so that she didn’t have to go to the cafeteria to eat on her birthday.

For me, as on this date every year; I am thinking about the morning that she came into my life. She made a grand entrance, all 5-pounds 6-ounces of her. Her daddy had ordered me to have a boy and he meant it, so when they told me I had a beautiful little girl, I started to cry.

It had been a rough birth, a planned C-section, but the spinal that didn’t work before they made the incision was not part of the plan, so I was a bit overwhelmed and the moment she was out, I was over-drugged to compensate for their mistake. Then, they brought her to me and the moment I saw her little face shaped like a pink heart, I fell in love with her. She was so tiny and so cute that she looked like a dolly, not like a real baby.

Everyone’s life is complicated, hindsight is an incredible tool to beat yourself with and you can do some real damage. I often find ways to blame myself for every unwise choice this beautiful woman has made, but I’m not going to do that today.

Today, I am going to celebrate her life, her birthday and the fact that when she is sober, she is full of Grace and Light. I will celebrate the day twenty years ago when she taught me to open myself to the spirit of our Universe, the Sun, the Moon, the Earth, the Stars, the Wind and the Rain. The day she taught me to stand barefoot outside and to raise my arms up to the sky so I that I could ground myself in the beauty and the strength of God’s love through the elements He created. I still try to remember to do this every morning and what my daughter taught me that day changed my life.

Today, I will celebrate the precious gift that her aliveness gives me, no matter where she has to rest her head on her birthday.

As my daughter falls asleep tonight, in the gritty gloom of Eddie Warrior’s Correctional Center in Oklahoma, I will fall asleep in sun-drenched Florida. But we will be together in spirit. I will hold her tight in my heart, I will keep her ever constant in my prayers and if I am blessed, tonight she will stop in for a visit as I dream.

Happy Birthday, Jodie Lynne

Special thanks to Michelle Marie for the awesome family picture above.

You Are The Wind Beneath My Wings

For my Partner in Pink

A beautiful Sand crane was standing on a wire looking down into my porch when she waved her wings at me.
I said, “Hey, come on down here and visit.”
She didn’t fly down to me, so I assumed that she didn’t have much to say.
She simply stood on one leg and waved her impressive, white wings.
She stared at me for a long while, until I began to wonder if maybe she was my mother.
Yes, I believe that our deceased loved ones can visit us, in numerous forms.
I sat watching her and I was entranced by her grace as she balanced on one foot.
Then, she lifted her wings and let the wind gently flow beneath them, moving like a ballerina on a tight rope, a dance so beautiful to behold.
Now I know why someone wrote the song, “You Are The Wind Beneath My Wings” because that’s exactly what she needed to touch the sky.
When the wind had lifted her wings sufficiently, she bounced on her feet and lifted off, a precious free spirit with wings that could carry her up, up into the clouds.
When I went out in the yard, a single white feather blew by my feet. I bent over to pick it up and brought it in the house.
I gave it a home in a glass mug, home to dozens of feathers from other visitors.

Eyelashes

Eyelashes by Jeanne Marie

We choose a corner table in the cozy country restaurant, two grown women, yet…I feel that we are playing dress-up. Pangs of guilt and anxiety needle me. I had to sneak away from Mom to steal this time with my sister. She looks as guilty as I do.

My sister and I are two pieces of a puzzle, day and night, the sun and the moon. We complete each other. Years of clinging together through the dark nights, years of my father’s rage, my mother’s silence, dysfunctional machinery that welded ropes of love, hope and faith that even we have not been able to destroy.

It doesn’t matter how long we’re apart; we begin our conversation where we ended on my last visit, as if no time had passed. Once, after a serious argument, we didn’t speak for three years and still; when we made up, it was the same way.

We talk about how we are workaholics, always working for (or loving) men who try to control, use, abuse, manipulate, annihilate and dominate. She tells me that at least I always fight back and stand up for myself. It’s true.

However, we agree that I accept the abuse too. I just make a lot of noise and end up quitting or running away. I’ve never resolved the situations. My life is paved with unresolved relationships.

I talk about starting my hypnotherapy to quit smoking and how when I am under, I always end up in deep, murky moats, smoky castles with walls built from bricks of terror and abandonment. I tell her that they dumped a baby out of a shopping cart into the smoke and her eyes open wide. I didn’t know if it was Sue Sue or me in that carriage. It felt like we were the same baby. I start to cry and light another cigarette. Two years of therapy and I’m still smoking.

“I’m almost fifty and I don’t want to deal with my childhood anymore, I just want to be okay. I just want to quit smoking.” I tell her. Tears fill her eyes.

We order breakfast and settle in with our coffee, letting it soothe us as I light another cigarette.

We need to talk about Mom, the reason I’m home this time. Our oldest sister has already agreed to take responsibility for Mom when the time comes. I’d always planned to be the one, but find now that the time is near, I’m not able to take care of my own needs, let alone imagine caring for anyone else.

“Is she still able to take care of herself?” I ask Susanne. “Keep track of her medicines and her doctor’s appointments? She has cried wolf so many times that I don’t know if she is honestly too confused to function on her own, and even though I just spent a week with her, I still can’t tell. Isn’t that crazy?”

“Alice in Wonderland,” says my sister. “Alice in Wonderland. I have been Alice at the Mad Hatter’s tea party my entire life. Nothing is ever what it seems.”

She talks about the falseness of our “loving, nurturing mother.” A mother who nearly destroyed her by trying to be the man in her life, her father, her husband, her daughter’s father.

I cringe as she talks, remembering my sister trapped, pregnant, the husband to-be my mother drove away, how I helped my sister work and escape when she turned eighteen. How she ran away into a world crazier than the one she left behind and preferred it still.

“Do you remember when dad was ranting and raving and he used to tell us that someday we’d find out that Mom was the reason he was crazy? Well, he was so right. My life has been nothing but a Mad Hatter’s tea party.”

She has mentioned Alice a lot these past few days. It has been years since I heard about Alice, so I know there is something she needs to say.

“Don’t you know?” she demands. “Don’t you know that Mom is your father figure? The dominating male figure in your life? How could you go through years of therapy and never figure out that your inability to deal with men is her fault?”

I know by the frustration in her voice, that she has wanted to tell me this for a very long time. I start to cry. Her words cause my stomach to flop over, my heart pounds with panic.

My gut knows that she is right. I just can’t believe that I have never seen it for myself. If my sister is Alice, I must be Sleeping Beauty.

“With all the therapy you’ve been in, haven’t you ever focused on Mom?” she shouts.

“No. I didn’t. I knew what she had done to you, how she controlled you and kept you a prisoner with Danielle ‘till you were eighteen, but she never wanted me. I was always the one that could handle her. Now I can’t handle her anymore and I realize that when I thought I could, it was only an illusion, I never had control. It was all just part of the game. She controls me too.”

My voice is soft and teary. Her voice is shrill and full of angry emotion. Her pain is the lighter fluid that sparks our conversation.

She cries out, “I can’t handle being around Mom. When I’m around her, I start to pull all of my eyelashes out again.”

I am startled, shocked by the degree of my sister’s torment. Yet, as she speaks the words, she is touching her eyelids in a familiar way. I have seen her do it a million times. How could I have ever thought that she had mascara in her eyes so often?

She continues, her voice taut with pain. “Mom is not normal. She hates everything about babies and childbirth. She hates kids. She is so sick. You know how I eat so fast? Well, one day when we were eating she said, ‘Watch me eat. Watch how I chew each bite slowly. Eat like this. Watch me. This is how you eat your food. Look at me.’ It was awful.”

“When you were little?” I ask.

“No! I was forty-one years old!”

We sit surrounded by elderly couples who pretend not to listen as we talk about our mother, our childhood.

Do they wonder if their own children sit in crowded restaurants exposing family secrets?

I feel as if I should shush my sister because the details that are pouring from her mouth are dirty and tattered, personal, best left to a therapist’s couch.

Her passionate grief, the shrill horror in her voice, the way she touches her eyelashes as she speaks, all these things freeze my words.

I decide that she is the only person in this room that I need to be concerned about.

“Why can’t you see the way that she has damaged you too, why do you think you never feel good enough? You had the same mother as me! You suffered the same things that I did. Do you think you escaped her mind games, her torture? Nothing was ever good enough for her; we were never enough for her. That is why you can’t deal with the men in your life, the same as me.”

My blind eyes are wide open now.

“We are so strong to have even survived, don’t you know that? We are both miracles. We are both so special, so gifted and she has not been able to destroy that in us. We are survivors.”

As we stand, we hold onto to each other for a long moment before we walk away with our heads held high. You can almost hear the people in the room let out a collective sigh of relief.

“Do you think we should have charged admission?” I ask her.

She laughs as she says, “Ya, cause then we could have used a microphone and sat in front of the fireplace.”

Ironic. When Dad was screaming, we used to hide in the old, unused fireplace in our bedroom.

I am grieving the loss of my sister even as we drive away from the restaurant together because I’ve learned that each time I leave her and fly home to Oklahoma, she will wipe me from her heart, erase me from her mind and that I won’t exist until I walk back in her door. I have to accept that it is the only way she can deal with her pain and her anger when I leave her.

Sadly, I know that one day I will knock on her door and she will not open it. She will erase me along with her past, leaving me behind as she runs away to another Mad Hatter’s tea party, an insane event that makes much more sense than her reality.

My baby sister Alice and me, Sleeping Beauty.

The Christmas Cactus

The Christmas Cactus…
The white blooms are from my sister Sue to her daughter, Danielle. Danny asked me to save its life when it was weak and dying. I mixed it with my half pink plant. It was half a plant because someone, not me, didn’t listen when I yelled, “STOP!”
By the way do you think men ask you to watch them back up and guide them just so you’ll get out of the way? Because they never do hear you yell “STOP!” or see you waving your arms in the air.
Anyway, my half a pink plant that my mother-in-law gave me when I moved here was very special to me and the half that Sue gave to Danny was very special to her.
At the time, that piece of white Christmas cactus would be all that I had left of my sister, Sue. I cried when Danielle trusted me with it. These two halves blended well and created a beautiful, full, gorgeous Christmas cactus.

I added a piece of peach cactus in thin areas and it bloomed in July. Really. If anybody has a Christmas cactus that has bloomed in July, even in Florida please let me know!
This Christmas cactus was dying, broken, and to the eye, worthless. I tenderly replanted these shattered, sickly leaves in one pot. I fertilized them with love, tears, Miracle Grow and prayers. It has grown and bloomed into a family treasure, just like my Great Nana’s gigantic Christmas cactus that we have passed through the family. (By the way whoever has custody of it now, I would love a piece to add to this new one.)
Merry Christmas to all the women in my family from me and the Christmas cactus. If I was going to dedicate a plant to all the men in the family, it would have to be a rose and they know why.
Love from all my Angels and me, Jeanne Marie

Life and Death

Recently, my nephew lost his battle with the family illness, alcoholism.
He was the oldest grandchild in our family and the very first baby I fell in love with, a passion that has stayed with me ever since. My three siblings and I have never lost a child, so this is a first for us and we are struggling to accept that he is really gone.
Although I was only 12 when he was born, my sister asked me to be his godmother. He was a gorgeous baby and by the time he was a year old, he had long blonde curls all over his head. I loved those curls. When he got his first haircut, I was devastated. I begged his mom not to cut his curls, but his dad thought he looked girly and he insisted on the haircut. I remember being so mad at both of them and I remember crying for days over the loss of his baby curls.
My sister lived at home when he was born, so he and I spent many nights snuggling and playing. I remember his colic and I remember all the nights I held him close to my body so my warmth could relax his hard little tummy, always walking him because he would cry as soon as I sat down.
He knew he had a problem with alcohol and he fought this disease with all his might, with every ounce of strength he had and he never gave up the struggle, fighting his demons until the last day.
My sister, his mom, used to dream that I was lost and that I was being dragged under in a swamp filled with snakes and monsters. After I became sober at age 23, she never had that dream again. I always say that she and her church friends prayed me sober against my will but the truth is that God does have a plan for each of us and He alone knows the reasons. We were not able to pray my nephew sober.
Yet, our human nature wants answers. God must get so sick of people at the Pearly Gates asking, “WHY?”
I want to ask, “Why me and not him? Why me and not my daughter?”
I prayed my heart out for my nephew, talked to him for several hours about how sobriety was possible for anyone, if it was possible for me. It just wasn’t in the Plan for him.
God doesn’t give us everything we ask for and He did give us Free Will. He also says no and maybe. My nephew was a no, my daughter is a maybe.
Right after Robbie’s death, my sister said that if his death saved one person, it would be a comfort to her. That happened so quickly that my head is still spinning. Another nephew was at home, sick, while his mom was at my sister’s house.
He is a recovering drug addict but lately he has been drinking, a lot. Beer with shots of vodka, the same poison that killed his cousin. He got nervous after he found out about his cousin because his eyes were turning yellow and his urine was dark brown. He went to the emergency room the next morning and he is now in intensive care. His spleen is swollen and his liver is inflamed. His cousin’s example made him go to the hospital and hopefully, with God’s grace, he made it there in time. (He is home and doing much better now.)
Life. It is what it is and it’s not always a picnic in the sunshine.
But if we could only remember that we make our own sandwiches and that we choose the drinks that we pour down our throats, that we pick the poisons that we put into our bodies, if we could remember that God can only work with what we give him, that He won’t force Himself on us, if we could remember that we are given choices, maybe there would be more addicts receiving a yes and less addicts destroying themselves and hurting everyone that loves them.
My sobriety is the greatest gift God ever gave me and I don’t know why me and not my nephew, why me and not my daughter.
During the coming days, as I try to comfort his mother, my sister, and as I mourn the loss of this man that I have loved since his birth 48 years ago, I will pray for courage, I will pray for strength and I will continue to pray for my Maybe Girl.
You are welcome to join me.

Dear daughter in prison,

Dear daughter in prison…

When you feel so alone and

there are bars on your door

I am standing beside you

of that you can be sure.

When letters don’t come

And you think you’re

forgotten

remember how

against all advice…

I still spoil you rotten.

I’m there beside you

in ways you can’t see

even though you kick

and you scream

as if you were three.

Soon your caterpillar

skin you will shed

and my beautiful

butterfly you

will be free…

hopefully before

I’m dead

or before

I’m lifting

seventy pound

care packages

at ninety-three.

Your loving mother,

Jeanne Marie

In Loving Memory…I See

Head Banging

Tonight (Friday) I got out of bed to turn out the light and to put my book away. Well, I turned out the light, turned around and about three steps later, I tripped over the box that my Chihuahua, Ms. Kita, uses to get up on the bed. I dang near killed myself. I was air born for about three feet and then BOOM. I hit the wall hard, landed on my shoulder that has a replacement joint, slammed it hard enough to break the wall plate and leave the imprint of said plate on my shoulder. I hurt my arthritic knees and twisted my bad foot. (It really is a bad foot.) I saw stars when my head smacked the wall and I free floated out in space for about ten seconds. I don’t think I fully passed out, but I did see stars. When I could breathe again, I sat up. I’m not sure, but I think angels sat me up and shook me back together because I was shocked when I sat up and realized, I just might be okay. Did I mention that I saw stars? In addition, something strange happened when I hit the wall…I saw my life experiences flash by and I saw the end of this stage of existence for me. I remember thinking, wow; this is what death feels like. I even thought that I was glad that I had almost finished the book, “Proof of Heaven,” A Neurosurgeon’s Journey into the Afterlife, by Eben Alexander, M.D. because it had given me strong reinforcement on what I already believed. I heard my husband calling my name as he tried to help me but his voice sounded as if he was miles away. I held my sitting position until the room stopped spinning and then I stood up, slowly. I made it to the couch and he brought me two ice packs, one for my head and one for my shoulder. My shoulder was already bruised and throbbing. Of course, I would fall on that shoulder.

All that happened a few hours ago, so I’m sure I will be okay. I’ll probably get my shoulder and my head x-rayed tomorrow, if it seems like I should. I hate that box. It happened so fast and I tried to keep my balance, but I couldn’t. The accident really made me think about how life can change in a split second. Also triggered memories of my mom falling, breaking her neck and dying a week later.

Saturday. Okay, it’s the morning after. I feel all right, very sore shoulder and a nice pounding headache to go with the nice lavender bruise on my cheekbone. Can you break an ear? Well, if you can, I did.

It could have been so much worse. The fall was bad enough that from today on (Sunday) I am going to accept each day as a bonus from Heaven.

I survived the weekend, painfully and carefully, but when I saw my doctor for a regular appointment today (Tuesday) she sent me to get a CAT scan of my brain and an x-ray of my shoulder. Every medical person who I dealt with today was upset that I wasn’t checked the night I fell. I really don’t understand why I didn’t go get checked out either. I knew I hit hard when I fell and I thought about going to the 24-hour walk-in clinic, but I decided I was too tired and I think the bang to the head disoriented me. Anyway, tests turned out okay, no broken bones or compromised skull, no brain bleeding, just a slight concussion, which I already knew.

However, I was traumatized twice, because when I checked in to Radiology for the CAT scan, I was told I had to pay a $275.00 co-pay to get my head examined. First time this has happened to me, thank you Obama Care. I now officially pay 50% more for 50% less insurance. If the headaches aren’t gone by next Tuesday, I may have to see a neurologist. If the doctor orders an MRI, looks like we’ll be mortgaging the house.

by Jeanne Marie

Mothers and Daughters

Mothers and Daughters.

Daughter, Mother and Grandmother…

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)

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

Happy Mother’s Day!

Maggie Mae and her purse…

I was getting ready to leave for the airport this morning and realized that Maggie Mae was planning on coming with me. I didn’t get out today and rearranged to leave Saturday, so she eased up on her packing. She didn’t realize that she wasn’t going with me and I’m not gonna tell her until I hug her goodbye on Saturday.
She loves her new sister and her new Daddy so she will be fine, but I’m already missing her. If you haven’t been following my saga, “Jodie’s Journey” I adopted Maggie Mae when her Momma, my daughter Jodie, went to prison April 7.
I’m going to Oklahoma to meet my third great grand baby, Violet Dawn, just a little over two weeks old! Met Carter, my second great grand baby last month. He is just over two months old and I met Ricky, my first great grand baby at the same time. Ricky is a handsome one-year-old. Grand baby number 14, courtesy of my son Rick and his angel Jessica, is due in December. It is The Year of the Babies for us.

The Flower Whisperer, Michelle Marie at http://michellemarieantellg.wordpress.com/

My flowers have been waiting all their lives for the Flower Whisperer, Michelle Marie. Since she came into their lives, they practically burst from my camera each morning, eager to get into her hands.
My flowers talk to her and she, in turn, creates amazing, magical art work from their messages. I am in tune with butterflies and animals but as much as I love my flowers, they have rarely spoken to me. I visit her site for a minute and end up staying for hours.
Michelle Marie is a trained graphic artist but what she creates could never be learned. Her magic comes from her heart, her fingertips are but a tool. Her posts are unforgettable. These are just a few of the stunning creations she has made me. Visit more of her incredible posts at: http://michellemarieantellg.wordpress.com/

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.

I Won’t Give Up…

Grammy, how long is three years?

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

What?! I’m getting a sister?!

What?! I’m getting a sister!?

I have to learn to share my toys!?

Are you joking!?

What’s her name? Maggie Mae? What kind of a name is that for a Chihuahua? She is a Chihuahua, right?
What does she look like?

Oh she is so pretty! But she’s not prettier than me, right Mommy? She has her own clothes, right?
Her own blankies?

Okay, I guess it will work out.

Let’s go get her!

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.

Jodie Lynne, I Will Stand By You…

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 you 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.

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/