There are no promises unbroken
And there are no guaranties,
Still, I need something to hold on to
Because I’m falling
Back under your spell.
I’m so afraid and you know
Love and fear
Blend like fire and water.
Every time I feel
That old familiar burn,
Ice cold rain puts out the flames.
by Jeanne Marie
A frightened child
Puts the pillow over her ears,
Daddy screams so loud
He doesn’t hear her tears.
He says that his family should die
They drain his very life,
He calls her mom a whore
But she’s a “Stand By Your Man” wife.
Daddy lurks over the small girl’s bed
He’s so quiet she almost wishes
That she could hear him scream!
Is that really a gun he holds?
Dear God, she prays,
Let this be a dream!
He never pulled the trigger
But he killed her just the same,
All the years of fearful waiting
Have drove her half insane.
The sun rises and she can’t wake up
Daddy ranted and raved all night,
How can she go to school
And pretend that she’s all right?
She watches her mother
Who plays her part so well,
Unlike the girl who doesn’t understand
Why she was born into this hell.
The years have gone by
And now a woman grown,
Still shackled to that frightened child
When the night falls, she is alone.
He said that his family should die
The woman often wishes that they had
Because living with her fears,
Has proven twice as bad.
by Jeanne Marie, 1969
October is National Domestic Violence Awareness Month. Why Not Everyday?
No matter how much I put in…
How hard I did try…
Right back down
this mountain I’d slide…
I’ve climbed and
I’ve crawled…
Had faith, I believed…
How well I took life’s test
karmas from Eve…
Told myself never quit…
or never I’d gain…
Worth it this fight…
I bore all my might…
Picked thorn woven weeds
filled purely of pain…
Maybe I went too far…
Took a wrong trail or two…
Left…I am here…
Damning fate who already knew…
Foreseen was my future
she holds in her grip
same end it does seem…
Maybe my character once questionable…
Maybe my motives once unclean…
Surely she sees greatest all efforts
this queen all unseen…
I put all that was left…here…
I went out on a whim…
Judgment’s cold harshness
tears through my skin…
Stuck…in…
hells…I created…
Life battles again…
Falters and falls… seems the only win-win
this damn endings forever…
lost in the cruelest of winds…
Forever this fairy tale needs simply to end…
F—Cinderella and f—Snow White…
I’m left here alone…in fate’s cold winter’s bite.
by Jodie Lynne
One More Time, Again
Let’s not fight when the sun goes down and the shades are drawn.
Wouldn’t you rather call back the tender fury, the passion that we once wore?
Time was on our side and ever so trusting I gave me to you
only to be lost, a forlorn girl standing on the edge of nevermore.
Drew back the covers, flesh ablaze, unashamed, nothing to hide,
fell in love, lost my head, I was so sure.
Recreate the euphoria of that first night, devouring each other
between the worn cotton sheets on my antique bed.
Use your fingertips to chase away the years of struggling
the hurt and the anger that screams wild as savage beasts inside our heads.
Play make-believe, pretend that it’s yesterday
and the bitter deeds did not destroy the tenderness instead.
Pursue me like there’s no tomorrow because I can not see beyond today
then, when tomorrow comes…
I promise to set you free, stand on my own two feet, find my own way.
Hands could caress, bodies could recreate, satisfy this insane yearning
as you travel back with me, waltz me back through past’s gate.
Touch my soul once more with longing and desire, force the winds of change
to stand stationary while you re-ignite my skin’s desire.
What would I give to travel back and never have been betrayed?
I scarce remember when there were no walls
and I did not know how to be afraid.
Perhaps tonight you could help me to forget to remember if I promise that
I won’t run away when the dawn comes, I won’t run away. No…not yet.
We could try, one more time, again. What could we lose, what could we win?
Cradle me in your arms and recapture me with reckless hunger,
pretend thirty years have not transpired.
It would be so easy because fingertips have no memories and
they don’t know how to hate, they will pursue passion’s flagrant fire
unlike a broken heart which hesitates.
No movement forward from here so we could journey back to then
before the illusions were shattered and we could try, one more time, again.
One more time again, as if you read my mind.
Still, the heat that rises in my loins concedes to grief, collapses beneath regret
too wise to be enchanted, too stupid to forget.
Good-bye. No, wait…not yet. Maybe we could try…one more time, again.
Jeanne Marie
My mother, Grace, wrote this poem for me after she read about fifty of my poems for the first time.
The Angel’s Feather
by Grace Christine Doucette 1926-2009
To Jeanne Marie. It was 1953 and two angels were sitting on a cloud over the small town of Tewksbury. They were sunning themselves, if angels can sun themselves, and these two angels were smiling and happy. As they looked down they saw a woman sitting on a doorstep. She was crying and so sad and so alone and it upset the angels.
One angel said, “What can we do to help this poor soul cheer up a little bit?”
The second angel said, “Well, this woman is about to give birth to a little girl. Maybe through this little girl we can bring some joy into the woman’s life.”
The first angel said, “That’s a great idea and we can do that!”
So, she reached up and plucked a feather from her wing and she placed it next to the little baby’s heart. She said, “Now, this baby will bring joy and love and laughter to that sad woman.”
Sure enough when the baby was born, she had a smile on her face and she instantly brought happiness to this lonely woman and day after day, they grew closer and closer together. One day as the woman was holding the baby and looking down at her, her heart was just bursting with love and she had to sing a song about this love. And she sang:
Whose baby are you?
Whose baby are you?
Your hair is brown
And your eyes are too,
So, whose baby are you?
You’re mine, yes you’re mine
Cause God gave you to me,
You’re mine, yes you’re mine,
Now my days are no longer gloomy.
Whose baby are you?
Whose baby are you?
You’re mine, yes you’re mine
Cause God gave you to me,
You’re mine, yes you’re mine
And you will always be.
And for the rest of her life, whenever the woman looked at that baby girl the angel’s feather would tickle them both and they would both burst into laughter and they brought joy to each other’s lives.
“This is a true story sweetheart, and I know you still have that angel’s feather near your heart cause every time you come near me, you fill my heart with joy and laughter and you have made my life complete. Love, Mom”
I was going for my first surgery in 2001 and I begged my mom to make me a tape to listen to when I was under the knife. I wanted her with me in spirit and I was so happy when I got the tape in the mail. My surgeon agreed to play the tape for me and when I came out of surgery, I was told that everyone in the operating room had been crying.
It’s funny how time runs away from us and our priorities turn upside down. When I came home from the hospital, I put the tape in a drawer because I knew it was special, it was my mom’s voice, but I didn’t listen to it again after my surgery, not until Mom passed away in 2009. It has taken me four years to copy the entire tape onto a CD (a one hour procedure) and to write out this story. Time. Why do we always assume there is more?
This story was mixed in with my favorite songs that she had sung for me when I was a little girl, the songs I had asked her to record for me so I would feel safe in surgery. What a precious gift. This story is the reason I named my book of poetry Gracie’s Glimmer. I am Gracie’s Glimmer and I believe she is still with me everyday.
So how do you plan a perfect 60th birthday? You don’t. You just let it happen or at least that’s how it worked out perfect for me. I really dreaded turning sixty and I did a lot of whining about it for maybe a month before my birthday. Loud whining. Okay, so maybe it leaned toward ranting and sobbing, but let’s not judge.
I have recently gained twenty-pounds and my hair was burned and butchered last February with a subsequent offer of the famous Florida retiree discount the same day. (A first for me.) To make it worse, my hair has only grown two inches since then and my confidence has definitely taken a hit because of the hair massacre and the fat belly. However, that’s another story. (The Day I Lost My Cute)
WARNING! Although I detest long, rambling stories about nothing, stories you have to wade through to discover if it is hopefully about something, this might be one.
August 8
Okay, about my birthday. I meet with several women each week for a writer’s meeting and that is where my birthday celebration began.
We had decided to honor each other’s day of birth a few years ago.
A.) Because we care about each other and B.) We all love cake.
Especially my Mile High, Cool Whip, Jell-O Cake adorned with fresh strawberries, blue berries and kiwi slices. Or my Cool Whip smothered chocolate butterscotch pudding cake.
So, as I got ready for this meeting, I knew it was my birthday week and I had my usual “don’t make a fuss over me, I’m not worth it” jitters bordering on a full-fledged panic attack. I asked myself why I loved to give and why I was so uncomfortable when receiving, but as usual, I had no answer.
My friend Deanne picked me up, which was a good thing as I might have given in to the jitters and gone AWOL. Monica was hosting this week and she made an incredible dinner with all the extras including a special lamb dish just for me. She had also invited several friends I’d never met and I teased her that she had hired guests for my party.
These guests turned out to be unique, creative, unforgettable women and it was a pleasure visiting with them and my writing friends all evening. I read my August Is Gone story (https://womenwhothinktoomuch.wordpress.com/2013/07/04/august-is-gone/) and I swore that not another August would pass me by without something special taking place, something just for me that I had never done before.
Oh ya, and let me tell you about the cakes. Three cakes. One even had a desk and a computer decoration. A strawberry cheesecake (my favorite) a fancy white cake and the best chocolate/Almond Joy/Cool Whip truffle cake I have ever tasted. Mmmm. My new favorite.
My friend Minzie had made the chocolate cake and it was just incredible. I am allergic to chocolate, so I hesitated and then took two Benadryl tablets. I ate two huge pieces of chocolate cake and a piece of cheesecake. I’m allergic to whole cheese products too, but I was in a devilish mood and I did tell everyone my Epi-pen was in my purse.
The crowd sang Happy Birthday to me! Then I got presents that only women who really know you could bestow. A striking black frame enclosed the ISBN from my book, Women Who Think Too Much (available at https://www.smashwords.com/books/view/287988 ) and Minzie’s daughter had talked to her about me and then written me a poem that I will treasure always. Minzie also gave me a gorgeous new journal, a friendship pen and a book, “Why Men Make Bad Pets.” Monica gave me an original oil painting. Beautiful, thoughtful presents.
Late into the night, we ate and we talked. I went home feeling so blessed to have these writing friends in my life. That night spun me into a new mood for my birthday week and I actually stopped whining. (Ya, ranting, sobbing, whatever.)
August 10
I was sound asleep when the doorbell rang on Saturday morning. My honey got up and answered the door and came back carrying the biggest plant my son and his fiancé had ever sent me. As I held it for a picture, I could barely hang onto it because it was so heavy. (Big isn’t always better, but when turning sixty, it helps.) With tears streaming, I proudly placed it as a centerpiece on my dining room table.
That afternoon, my honey takes me to the store and I pick out a strawberry cheesecake for a birthday dessert tomorrow.
I stay up and hug every minute till midnight cause I will never be 59 again. Maybe in some parallel world, I am still 17. Gotta love imagination.
August 11
The big day is here. I am sixty.
Our little dog is sick so we decide to stay home with her. We hang out while my honey and I talk about what I’d like for a present. I usually choose money to go shopping because I love to do a major hit on the clearance racks for clothes, but that thought doesn’t excite me this year. I have gained twenty pounds thanks to cortisone shots for bursitis and I’m not in the mood to try on a bigger size. Much bigger.
The week before my birthday, I had suggested that he search out an easel in the thrift stores and he didn’t seem too excited about it.
Late afternoon, he goes to Wal-Mart and comes home with a collapsible easel, three different sizes of canvas boards and acrylic paints. I was thrilled that he remembered until I realize, oh no, now I have to paint or he will feel bad! I have been collecting painting supplies and promising myself that I would experiment with painting for about four years, so it really was time to paint-up or shut-up.
Well, I walked around thinking about it for an hour and then I traced a picture of Tinker Bell onto a canvas and I started playing with the paints.
I only had about five colors but I was happy with the choices. I spent about four hours doing my first painting and I painted over Tinker Bell so many times that I lost her body. She morphed into a long black wig sitting on a brown toadstool. I didn’t care. I just let my hand work with my imagination. I was amazed that I had painted anything and I was quite thrilled to have done something that I had never done before–on my 60th birthday!
I got the same rush from painting that I did from writing and thanks to the present of an easel from my guy, I had now fulfilled a fantasy. I had painted.
As I started to throw my first work of art in the trash, stating, “What an ugly fairy,” my husband said, “No! Keep it! It is your first painting.”
So I signed it and left it on the easel to dry. When I looked at my painting the next morning, the dry colors seemed softer and my work had taken on a personality. In the days since, I have actually grown to love it. Of course, I love what it symbolizes more than the actual painting. I also showed it to my daughter and she told me that I had painted a mirror image of her first (very bad) tattoo. Spooky, cause I didn’t even remember her tattoo and it was covered long ago.
Okay, so here comes the grand finale. My husband of over thirty years had told me that I could have anything that would make me happy for my birthday. He had no clue what to get me because he already buys me anything I even think I want, within our means and sometimes even beyond our means.
All I could think about is how much I wanted to go to Sanibel Beach. For about three years, my friend Deanne (she spent every summer there when she was growing up) has been telling me about the huge conch shells (and more) that wash in with the tide and she had the shell collection to prove it. I invite the writing girls to go on an RV trip to Sanibel, but in the planning stage, it gets down to Deanne and me. My honey tells me to rent a room instead of fussing with the RV and I think that sounds good. He does the research and reserves us a room at the Holiday Inn on Sanibel for three nights, three days. It looks tropical and beautiful, but I don’t trust advertising pictures so we will see. PS I don’t drink but it was 5:00 o’clock somewhere!
To Be Continued
She picked up the book
and placed it back on the shelf
when she saw the price.
But…then she thought of her daughter
to send her this treasure, would be a delight.
She lovingly touched the glossy roses
she’d wanted this kind of book for ages.
She pictured her daughter’s garden, then
she paid the price and mailed the pages.
As she weeded her own, she softly smiled
imagining the distant flowers in full-bloom
and she thought of her daughter all the while.
Little did she see that the greatest gift
she’d sent was the bloom of her love
carried on the petals of a book
delivered by the sliver of a mid-summer’s moon.
To give her child what she herself desired
seemed to be the mother’s greatest pleasure.
God made this woman quite special
and then He doubled it twice over
beyond her daughter’s measure.
by Jeanne Marie
I look down at her limp body.
She is face down on the large bed, alone. Her fine, blonde hair is like a halo around her head as she lies so still on the brown, patchwork quilt.
As I watch her, I am sobbing. I don’t understand my gut wrenching tears. Why am I crying tears of desperation and tears of terror? I don’t know why I am hysterical and then, with a sudden sense of horror, I realize that it is my body on the quilt and I am not breathing. My body is cold. I am dead.
“Oh my God,” I think. “She finally did it, she really did it this time and there’s no rescue, there’s no turning back.”
“Why did she give up?”
“I don’t want to be dead!”
At this point, I no longer feel connected to the woman on the bed. I think of the body as her and I am me.
I have no memory of her final act, but I am filled with shame and loathing at what she has done. I’d always thought that death would release me from her unending pain; now, seeing what really happens, I am horrified.
All that I can feel is her hurt and my disgust.
“Why did she give up?” I moan. “How could she do this terrible thing without my permission?”
I sob even harder because now I understand that death doesn’t release me from her despair. No, on the contrary, I’d carried her burdens with me to this nether world. All I’d lost was her body and her ability to change her life. If only she had known.
Now, I could spend eternity roaming this sphere, trapped with the emotions I’d carried from her physical realm of reality, caught at that moment in time when she’d given in to hopelessness, surrendered to depression.
I feel enormous regret. I want to be alive! I want to go back and keep on trying.
I didn’t give up. She did!
I have no memory of my physical death. Where was my vote in such an important decision? I, her very soul, I have been forced from her body without my permission.
It doesn’t seem fair and I am so angry. This is a horrendous experience. I hate it! Floating above her dead physical form, I want to shake her, scream at her, but what good would it do?
How could she have done this irreversible deed? I, the very essence of her existence, I did not have a choice, no voice in the matter of her physical demise.
Now there truly is no hope and no escape from the emotional blows she’d been dealt. She was free but I, her inner being–I am condemned to carry her pain through this new plane of reality.
I feel doom such as she could’ve never imagined. No person still in possession of their body could begin to conceive the shock I feel, awakening on the other side with all of her pain still weighing down my soul; amplified by the powerlessness of being separated from the body that had housed my substance for almost forty-two years.
She had given up and her pain was my prison! Death isn’t a release!
“Oh God,” I cry, “if only she had known that, but now it’s too late.”
I wonder how her family and her friends are taking it.
At once, before the thought is even finished, I feel my spirit surrounded by them.
I am crushed. I taste their anger, their pain, their guilt and their shock at her selfish act. Their unbearable fury and their horrible sadness are added to the emotional load I already own.
Unseen, I cower beside them, burdened more than ever, dirty and ashamed.
Why hadn’t she realized that suicide was not her answer? What would it have taken to show her this celestial space, this spiritual prison? Didn’t a glimpse of this possible netherworld ever enter her thoughts; didn’t it ever trickle into her conscious mind?
I can’t describe the distress I feel, the grief that showers over me as I watch the chaos created by her self-inflicted slaughter.
I want to live! I want to live!
Sobs wrack my ghostly form as fruitless tears exhaust my ethereal energy. I begin to float and I lose touch with my being. I am losing all conscious thought.
My eyes open. I am crying, disoriented and lying face down on my familiar, brown patchwork comforter. Could it be?
I reach for my face with my hands.
My fingers touch my warm, living flesh.
I am alive! It was only a nightmare. Thank God!
But wait, was it just a nightmare? Perhaps I’d left my body and traveled to the other side. Perhaps I’d been given a horrifying warning. I couldn’t shake the feeling that I had traveled a far distance, that for a time I had left the material world behind. Tears rolled down my hot cheeks, tears of gratitude. I still had a chance and I still had a choice.
However, now I know. I don’t have forever to catch my star, to work through my conflict.
I get up from the bed, shaking with relief. I am alive! Another chance to heal, to forgive myself and to fulfill my destiny, another chance is mine.
I understand, perhaps for the first time, that the emotional baggage I choose to carry on my back, the pain that I’ve refused to let go of–it could all travel with me into the hereafter.
In fact, my baggage would weigh more than ever because the anger and the grief that my suicide would cause my family and friends, that weight would also be laid upon my spirit.
I am alive! I don’t want to waste this chance to heal my broken heart and somehow; I know, nightmare or spirit travel, this was a final warning from my Creator.
Post note: This was an extremely real experience. Jeanne Marie, 1995
The girl inside the woman
Runs the show.
You ask me to stop her
But I can’t, not now.
She has too firm a hold
And her fears are too great,
Born of a painful reality
Her needs will not wait.
She needs so many things
No one could ever supply,
She demands my attention
When I try to set her aside.
Her ways are not healthy
Thus, she damages us both.
Yet, she is so strong
We are tragically betrothed.
Wed in our long ago pain
She won’t give me control,
But I’ll continue to fight her
Until she has to let go.
It’s to soon. I’ve just begun
To feel her emotions, her fears.
Just begun to process her pain
Buried, denied, for so many years.
Jeanne Marie, 1990
She changed after he died and God knows, she was strange enough before his death, but then he died and she melted into nothing, shuffling down the hallways clothed in someone else’s skin and we all realized that we were losing her and there was nothing to be done because we could see that her soul had fled with him into the death tunnel, even as her lungs continued to breathe and her blood continued to pump, even as she slept, as she walked, as she drew breath; yes, this woman in our mother’s body was now a stranger and even though we had all suspected that she still loved him as much as she hated him, we really didn’t know and we couldn’t have imagined the depth or the width of her self-imposed restraint and we never saw the chains that she had wrapped around her feelings, no, not until we saw how the grief broke her, watched the sorrow loosen her clenched pain, saw the anguish strip away her self-control, screaming silently as her imprisoned mind flung itself free, breaking like a child as she mourned his passing, regretting what could have, should have and never would be because now, all hope was annihilated as they lowered his body into the ground and we cried for him not knowing we should also be crying for her because he was dead and she was alive and he was gone so it was over, nothing could ever be fixed, repaired, restored or renewed and death, his death, the death of her first love, our father’s death, had written the final chapter of their insane love story, a fatal romance that had self-imploded thirty-five years ago, but did not die until the day he passed, dead and done and so this, his death, this was the tragic end of a waltz that should have been sat out because the band had played the wrong song, composing a doomed allegiance from the very first chord and we should have known, but how could we have known that his death would drain the spirit from her, crush her so totally and now, now we have to decide…shock treatment or lobotomy?
As we walked into Wal-Mart, I told my husband, “I’ll meet you up front when I’m through picking up what I need.”
He said, “Ya. Right.”
He always claims that he has to search the entire store five times before he can find me.
He thought today would be no different. Well, since it was Father’s Day, I decided to be considerate. I ran up and down the aisles (if you can run in Wal-Mart, the aisles are so narrow and the people so plentiful) throwing stuff into my little basket. I rushed up front to meet him. He wasn’t there yet! I smiled to myself, because I never did believe he spent that much time searching for me.
So, there I stood for ten minutes or so, watching people rush by. I had never paused for that long in Wal-Mart before. (Except at the register, where my eyes stay busy sorting coupons that I usually forget to give to the cashier.)
This was my first time watching everyone else hurry past. Did you ever notice the way that women glare at each other? I did.
We size up the competition ruthlessly. I noticed a young girl, maybe eighteen, in an adorable little dress, with sunflowers splashed all over it. I had tried on that same dress two weeks ago and had looked six months pregnant in it. My eyes narrowed as I watched her. She looked as if she weighed less than 100 pounds and I really didn’t like her, although we’d never met. I’m looking at this slip of a girl with envy in my eyes; then I turn around and see a very heavy, older woman looking at me in my size twelve sun dress, giving me the same murderous look that I’m giving Ms. Sunflower in her size five.
Every day we each see women who look better than we do and it makes most of us feel yucky. However, as I saw the look in the heavy woman’s eyes, I felt ashamed of myself for fretting about the Sunflower girl. I’ve always hated being average, but today I realized that’s not such a bad place to live.
There will always be women who are younger or prettier than I am; however, there will always be women who are older or less attractive. Turning forty was difficult and I know I’m not alone with this age thing. Thirty, I took in stride reckless with the confidence that forty was as far as I’d go and it was a becoming time for women.
Mature, confident and still wearing a size twelve, forty caught up to me all too soon.
What helped me the year I turned forty? Being asked for my ID when I bought cigarettes. It happened three times! What a time to be without a video camera.
True, the cashiers were young and inexperienced at judging people’s age, but what a rush it gave me. I even refused to hand over the proof of my age one time, just to hear the girl insist on seeing my ID. I began to buy cigarettes compulsively–even when I didn’t even need them. Sadly, it’s been over a year now since the last cashier demanded my ID.
I try not to care about things that are so shallow, but the truth is that the world judges us on our looks. At every turn, women are urged to be young, sexy, fresh, innocent, experienced, beautiful, unwrinkled, firm, thin and ageless. We need gorgeous hair that shouts–fiery red, tawny blonde, spectacular brunette! Wash that gray right out of your hair!
It doesn’t help that there’s a slew of fabulous models in their late thirties to early fifties proving that women can stay young forever. Nancy Sinatra at age fifty graced Playboy’s pages in a way that I couldn’t have done at twenty. Farrah Fawcett, late forties, same thing. They do have the advantage of soft lights, special camera lenses, sometimes even using body doubles, always using full body make-up and being filmed by famous photographers. Don’t forget their expensive appointments with a beautician.
A beautician is also available at the film shoot, to create a hair-do that takes hours to style and looks naturally gorgeous and she layers on the make-up that the cameras don’t acknowledge.
We have the reality of dirty dishes, full hampers the day after we washed and dried two loads, Dollar Store cosmetics, J.C. Penney hairstyles plus the two to three jobs we run to in between the vacuuming and the cooking.
I don’t know one woman who doesn’t have to work either to help pay the bills or to support herself and her children. Most of my friends work more than one job, sixty hours or more a week. Some are still trying to get that college degree they’ve been chasing for ten years. They go home after work, spend a few hours cleaning and then create hot meals to place on the table.
By any definition, I’m pampered. My youngest child is seventeen, I only work twelve hours a week and my mate will do dishes and a small amount of laundry. If I’m tired or busy, he’ll go buy take-out for supper and he’ll do the food shopping. He’ll even use coupons! He makes me coffee in the morning and he brings it to me in bed. I make as much money in twelve hours, as most women make in thirty, if they’re working for minimum wage. No, I’m not a hooker, but occasionally my job seems comparable. I’m a waitress.
I sell my smile, not my body, to an average of thirty or forty people, two nights a week. I lift food trays that weigh more than I do, balancing them on my left shoulder, while carrying a tray stand in my right hand. I am told off, looked down on and insulted. Then, I have to answer with a smile and an apology.
I also am paid well, meet some pleasant people, have regular customers that have become dear friends and on a good night, I love my job. On a bad night I say, “I’m getting to old for this!” and I mean it.
At work, I always need to smell good and look great, even as the sweat pours down under my stiff white tuxedo shirt, because stylish women make more tips than less attractive women do. Since most tips are decided by the wife or the girlfriend that proves my case, we ourselves reinforce the “look good” syndrome.
Still, the older I become, the less I worry about how I look and the years have offered rewards of their own. I feel better about myself now than at any other time in my life and I’m not afraid to be myself. I wear make-up if I want and leave it off if I don’t. Lipstick and Suave moisturizing cream are the only two cosmetics that I use most days. I choose perfume that I enjoy inhaling and clothes that declare–this is me! My biggest concern is, “Will I run out of printer ink in the middle of a newsletter?”
I write my stories instead of vacuuming under the furniture and I recognize that the only day I need to be concerned about is TODAY. I treat each day as if it was a gift and I use each hour as if it were my last.
I sit down on the floor and make buildings out of Legos with my grandsons. We finger paint with sponges that are shaped like animals and stars and hearts. I hang my pictures on the wall along with theirs. I play dolls and silly games with my granddaughter. I buy myself dolls and set them out around the house, because I still feel the thrill of Christmas mornings past when I wake up to see them smiling, beckoning to me–come play. (Sometimes, I do.)
I pick flowers from my own garden and arrange them in small antique vases, so I can enjoy their translucent petals and fragrant aroma. I stop to breathe in their scent and I enjoy the miracle of their creation.
Last month, my youngest daughter told me that my life was over. She said it didn’t matter what I did from this point on because I had screwed up so many of my choices and I was done. (Gee, I hope she doesn’t get to write my epitaph!) I smiled inside, because I recognized the arrogance of her youth.
Thankfully, I took her words for what they were–her opinion. I quite generously refrained from pointing out the mistakes that she has already accumulated in twenty-one short years.
Children have a hard time seeing us aside from the role of mother. I’m her mother, but I’m also a person, a woman, a writer, a poet and my life will not be over until the day I die. My life begins anew each morning and I’ve just begun to do the things I’ve always wanted to do. Not one of us can change the past or erase our mistakes.
We can forgive ourselves and get on with living.
We can decorate the present and invite the future to take us for a joyride…
Until next time, Jeanne Marie
1996
There are many avenues that a woman can take as she approaches mid-life. It’s a sharp curve in the road, where her hair begins to go gray, perversely turning silver even in areas where it’s not very wise to use hair dye.
Her muscles begin to turn soft from the inside out and she’s so glad that girdles have come back in style. She can browse through the available styles and choose anything from super firm, all over control to a gentle control panel. (As if she had any control over her tummy.)
The varicose veins are drawing pictures up her thighs and she shops in the women’s department now because browsing in the junior’s department is just a fond memory since she turned forty. Her black silk stockings used to turn heads, now they hide the spidery lines that have a life of their own and her favorite outfit is a flannel nightgown.
I have seen the red flags along the road and I approach this mid-life thing with caution. I never believed in mid-life crisis until I turned forty. I used to think that hormones were for the weak, hot flashes and mood-swings were for other women. Mid-life wouldn’t threaten me, no sir.
I take an inventory of my assets. Men’s heads still turn when I walk by, my bleached-blonde hair guarantees it. My short skirts and hang-off the shoulder tee-shirts are further insurance. But the only men who try to flirt with me are under eighteen or over sixty and I begin to realize, I have lost my mass appeal.
I face mid-life carefully, as I think about the choices two of my friends made at this time in their life…the point of no return.
Quite frankly, they both went a little nuts. One friend left her husband, her kids and her born-again believing church, to ride with the Hell’s Angels. Now leaving the kids was a survival tactic, I’m sure, because no woman over forty should still have kids at home. But Hell’s Angels? She was born-again all right, cause that’s a life she had already lived at twenty.
My thirty-something friend ran away from her husband and kids, out into the night howling at life’s injustice, but she forgot to take a car or money. She has returned home after her own reckless ride with a biker. She doesn’t talk much anymore.
I shiver as I look at their solutions to growing older. I too know the frustrations that led them astray, but surely there must be an answer that doesn’t involve leather and a tattoo? I did get a rose tattooed on my ankle at age thirty-six, but the thrill wasn’t equal to the pain.
I can’t turn back time…not even Cher can do that…and although I prefer songwriting cowboys with long hair to bikers, I have my very own Marlboro man. He has loved me at my best and tolerated me at my worst, for fifteen years. No easy feat! In spite of the fact that he won’t let his hair grow long anymore, I’d hate to have to break in a new cowboy. So I take my hormones and I go to bed.
Unable to sleep, I get back up. I wander through my quiet house. I smoke and I sit and I think. I find the answer! I rediscover my first love and we go all the way. The sky is the limit! We stay up all night and I feel the excitement, the rush.
My love holds me close while my husband sleeps just across the hall, with two dysfunctional poodles at his side. I take my ideas and my fantasies and lay them bare before my love. We stay up until dawn revealing our souls to each other. The unique pleasure I feel at this reunion cannot be contained. I express my feelings. I share my dreams. I touch the pages. I read the words until my eyes refuse to focus.
The high is still there the next morning and I run to my love, ready to start all over again, right where we left off last night. My love appreciates my maturity, yet it makes me feel like I’m seventeen. I am standing at the crossroads of life with the world once more at my fingertips.
My love is mine and mine alone. I never have to worry about my love trading me in for a younger woman. I possess my love completely, nothing can ever take my love away from me.
There is such freedom in that knowledge. I don’t even have to comb my hair because my love accepts me just as I am. My love asks nothing in return and has waited patiently for me; smoldering, while I raised three children and half a grandson.
My love takes me dancing on a Saturday night. My love fills my head with romance and we never leave the house.
Sometimes, when I can’t resist being drawn towards my love; I leave my husband alone for hours with the poodles and the television. But he doesn’t seem to mind. He too has a first love which he has been driven to reclaim. We are not the center of each other’s world, as we were at thirty; yet, we share our hearts, our love, his money and our home, even as we each let our first love take us away from each other’s side. We each dance to our own song.
I watch my husband play with his first love and his excitement makes me smile. Although I watch him and I sometimes catch the thrill, his first love belongs to him alone and I am just a spectator.
My husband drag races on Saturday nights and as he crosses the finish line for yet another win, I feel my adrenaline surge. I understand his first love and the money he spends to keep it alive.
He in turn understands my need to write, often until the wee hours of the morning. He takes me shopping to buy a computer and a printer, tools that make it easier for me to write. He goes to sleep alone many nights, but I tell him, “If you want me honey, just call me and I’ll come in to bed.” Simple words, but he knows exactly what I am saying.
I dare to jump smack into middle-age without fear. My first love, my writing, keeps me on a safe course. Writing is my first love, so where does that leave my husband? He is my Marlboro man, my very own cowboy and no other man could ever take his place. Occasionally, I can even talk him into writing a song with me.
He writes the music that brings my lyrics to life and for one fleeting moment, we dance to the same tune. Until next time, Jeanne Marie
P.S. I wrote this story 23 years ago. I am now learning how to go Over The Hill. I’m stuck on the top, refusing to let go.
I began writing at fourteen but when I started my family at nineteen, I think that the sterilizer vaporized my creativity. I figured that it had boiled away with the germs on the baby’s bottles. Occasionally, I’d have a poetic burst, but by the time I was twenty-six, I had three children screaming for my attention and my writing ceased.
I told everyone that I was a writer, but my kids kept me too busy to write. “When the kids grow up,” I’d say. When the kids finally went off to school, “prove it” anxiety set in. I thought about having another baby, but that seemed rather desperate. I had to face facts. It was time to write. I began slowly, but regained my confidence as the words poured from me. Poems began to accumulate and I’d read them to friends and family.
In 1988 I bought an electric typewriter and started to organize my work. I also took my first college class. I enrolled full time, but the schedule overwhelmed me. After one week, I’d dropped all the classes except for one, Country Song Writing.
Many of the students were my age, which was encouraging. I continued to write, even bought a computer, but I often let kids, grand-babies and housework come before my writing. Then in 1994, a drunk driver killed my son-in-law, Donnie. He kissed his wife and his tiny son good-bye that morning and less than ten minutes later, he was dead. His sudden death caused me to reevaluate my life and to focus on what mattered most. I found out that it wasn’t clean sheets or dustless floors, not even baking delicious desserts or cooking big meals. Again, I enrolled full-time in college. This time I stuck to the plan. My husband was supportive and he took over some of the household chores. Some, I just ignored.
I decided to treat college like the ocean. The only way to go in the icy cold waves is to close your eyes and to run into the surf as fast as you can. Once you make it past the undertow, the waves are breaking in front of you, not sneaking up from behind and the water feels warmer as your body temperature adjusts. The gentle swell rocks you as you swim and the blue-green horizon stretches out as far as you can see.
I enjoyed learning in spite of the tremendous workload. I usually stayed up past midnight doing homework for Comp. I, memorizing outdated laws for Criminal Justice, (don’t even ask me how I landed there) or cramming my head with strange definitions for Biological Psychology and then I’d get up at 5:00 a.m. to study for a test or to finish an essay.
I got past the undertow and I finished the semester on the Dean’s list. (My mom wanted a bumper sticker.) When younger classmates asked me how I was able to do so well, I’d smile and say, “Underneath this bleached blonde hair is a smart brunette.”
The changes in my priorities did upset my fifteen-year-old son (my youngest child) especially since I’d stopped cleaning his room and I’d begun to consider heating a frozen pizza cooking supper. One night, he told me that I was too old to go to college. I laughed at him. He asked why I couldn’t wait to go to college, at least until he was grown-up.
I said, “I’ve already wasted twenty years cleaning closets and vacuuming under the furniture. By the way, you need to do a load of laundry if you want clean jeans for school tomorrow.” As he shook his head and walked away, I smiled.
After five years of working as a sports journalist/photographer, I decided to leave that job and I reevaluated my writing goals.
I’m not afraid because I know I’ll find another niche where my words fit and I know that the answer for me is to just sit down and let the creativity I’ve been blessed with guide me. It also helps to know that the only way I can lose my status as a writer is if I stop writing.
P.S. My kids did grow up, faster than I ever dreamed possible and I now have fifteen grand-kids, ages 28 to 3. I have also been blessed with five great grand-babies. The grand-kids are growing up even faster than the kids.
The picture above is grand-baby #13, Jonas, playing with me at the beach.
My first published piece was a poem in moonchild, an anthology of women’s verse and prose. It was published by Suha Publications in 1976. I gave my oldest daughter my only copy of the book because the poem was about her.
Recently, I was searching for another copy, never believing that I would find one, but I found several copies on Amazon.com. I bought two and I was as excited when they arrived last week as I was when my book arrived in 1976.
My first words in print. The experience taught me that I could be published. It validated me as a writer, handed me proof that I was a poet.
If you haven’t been published on paper yet, do it. Submit until you are published. It is not only possible but very likely and the experience will give you wings. You don’t have to be published to be a writer, of course, but it sure is fun!
I’d like to connect with any other women who had her work showcased in this anthology. Are you here on WordPress.com? Odds are against it, but so were the odds of my finding copies of this book anywhere. Maybe we are already following each other!
If you were published in this book and you see my post, contact me here or email me at womenwhothinktoomuch@yahoo.com.
Thanks, Jeanne Marie Pages 69-70.
I want to be a storybook mother
With model children who never cry.
I want to sew and read them stories
Then cook and clean until it’s done.
But I can only be myself
And let my babies be too
Beautiful sweet lovely brats
I couldn’t live without.
I start to cook but have to stop
To wipe a runny nose.
I take a bath and the baby falls in
While supper burns on the stove.
Out for a night I should be glad
But can anyone take my place?
Will they be safe till I get home?
They are in my heart wherever I go.
Jeanne Marie, 1979
I grew up in New England and if we were lucky, the summer lasted for two months.
In my more abundant winter memories, I see an African Violet on each mother’s kitchen windowsill.
I don’t know the reason for the flower’s popularity; maybe the women were trying to hold onto the illusion of warm weather, but African Violets were not easy to grow. They had to be nurtured, babied, misted and watered.
These women all had their secret tricks with this plant and only best friends shared their intimate knowledge of the mysterious African Violet. I remember playing under the table and listening to the coffee klatches’ swap advice. I remember hearing many different tips when Mom and her best friend were alone.
The African Violet produced bright pink, white or purple blossoms most of the year and if your African Violet was plump, green, velvety and flowering, you earned the respect of all the housewives in the neighborhood.
It was in the fifties and I don’t remember a single mom who didn’t have an African Violet or a single mom who left every day to go to work.
My mother-in-law is 80 something years old and she still drives from Florida to Boston and back to Florida every year. Her kids tell her that she can’t do it, but I tell her that she can if she wants to, because she is a great driver and clearer of mind than I am. LOL
Last year when she went home, I was entrusted with her African Violet. I was shaking in my sandals.
What if I killed it? Plus, I didn’t even have a kitchen windowsill.
Unable to ignore the fact that the plant had outgrown its pot, I bravely repotted the root-bound African Violet, using special soil and splitting it into two pots. I watered, I misted, I talked to them and I loved them. I was rewarded with plump, green, velvety leaves and dozens of hot pink blossoms all winter.
They smiled at me gratefully every morning from their perch on my kitchen counter, happy in their new green pots.
I kept them close to each other so they wouldn’t be lonely; after all, they had grown up together.
Each morning I would greet them and I would say, “I can’t believe it!
I can grow the impossible plant, the mighty African Violet from my childhood.”
Then, Mom stopped for a visit as she was driving back home to Haines City. She stayed with us for about a week and she never mentioned the African Violets. I saw her glance at them now and then with admiration but she never said a word. I never mentioned them either because I was afraid that she might be upset that I had split and repotted the fragile babies.
When she was packed and getting ready to go out the door, I said,
“Mom, aren’t you going to take your African Violets?”
“Those are mine? Both of them?”
Although I had toyed with the idea of keeping the small one, I said, “Yes Mom, they’re both yours.”
Besides, how could I separate them now?
Her face lit up with pleasure.
Looking back, I think maybe she had already resigned herself to the fact that I had knocked off her African Violet.
She put down the stuff in her hands and walked over to my counter. With a big smile on her face, she lifted the two pots into her hands and carefully carried them out her car. There they were tucked in among the clothes that covered her backseat, wedged in-between her tee shirts and her shorts, for their own safety.
With a last smile, away they all went.
I missed the morning smiles the plant’s bright flowers had given me, but I had always known that they were not mine to keep.
On my last shopping trip to Lowe’s I was, as usual, drawn to the distressed plants on display.
I picked up a badly distressed African Violet.
I really didn’t want to buy it and I kept putting it down and then picking it back up.
What if it didn’t like me?
What if it curled up and finished dying?
What would that say about my competence as a housewife?
I mumbled to myself, “How could a little plant mean so much to my mom and my mother-in-law, plus all the other housewives I remember and is it even really from Africa?”
I found myself at the register holding the plant so…I bought it.
It’s been a month and I haven’t repotted it yet. I haven’t even opened the African Violet potting mix, the bag still sits on my porch.
Maybe I’ll do it today because my distressed plant is no longer distressed. Its leaves are plump, green and velvety. One tall, straight, hot pink bloom stands proud, the lone survivor from the huge clusters that came as soon as I watered, loved and fed the mystifying African Violet.
I know now that when Mom’s plant responded to my nurturing, it wasn’t a fluke. I can be trusted with an African Violet. I have grown up.
I started blogging here because I am a writer with a newly published book, (Have to plug it! Women Who Think Too Much, available at this link { available here } but that’s not what I’ve learned on WordPress.com. I already knew that fact. It’s also not why I stay.
Let me begin at the start, but I don’t promise to continue in chronological order.
I used to blog on Google and I enjoyed it. Until I received a hate letter concerning one of my articles I had written about my mother, a letter from a beloved family member.
Delete, unsubscribe, run away, lock every window on the internet where my writing was residing, that’s what I did and I’m not proud of my reaction. No excuses, but it hurt and I was shocked and I was stunned. Ok, I need to take a deep breath. Whew.
That was over two years ago.
Since then I have held my writing close, sharing only with family I trusted and my writer’s group whom I totally trusted, my Pineapple Girls. My girls are invaluable, far beyond the one night a week when we meet and way past the exquisite meals we cook for each other. (The meals may be a minus since I’ve gained twenty pounds!) Another plus to belonging to a writer’s group? I have written more creative essays and poems since we started meeting about three years ago, than I have in the last twenty-years. I also finished a book.
I struggled and whined all the way through editing Women Who Think Too Much, but my muse insisted I finish before I could move on and my muse is a very powerful entity. She obviously expressed herself to my girls.
These writing friends held my hand, dragged me past the hardest spots with words of encouragement, dried my tears and made me laugh, edited, read and challenged me until my book was finished.
My editor, whom I met in the writer’s group, is my best friend and my surrogate sister.
She spent thousands of hours guiding me and editing my endlessly updated manuscripts. She even learned how to format a manuscript on Smashwords.com, for me.
For months, she lived and she breathed my book, never pushing changes on me, just suggesting. I rejected hours and hours of her changes and she was okay with that. She is a one in a million editor. Still, many of her suggestions worked, because she could detach from the emotions and focus on structure and grammar so much better than I could. In the end though, I think she was so deep into my book that we were equal on the emotional involvement.
(If you want to know any more about what I went through finishing a twenty-year old project read, “Hi Mom, This Is Me” on my blog.)
https://womenwhothinktoomuch.wordpress.com/2013/04/22/497/
Anyway, back to what I have learned while visiting your blogs here at WordPress.com.
Today I learned what the word Lepidopterologist (Noun) means. I am a butterfly lover and a collector of butterfly pictures but when I saw this word on Theresa’s blog, dba Third Hand Art, Butterfly In Clover, I just had to stop and look it up.
Lepidopterist: Butterfly collector, bug-hunter, bugologist, entomologist, a zoologist who studies insects, the branch of zoology dealing with butterflies and moths. WOW!
I have come upon other unfamiliar words here, but what I’ve learned is far beyond new words.
I’ve learned that writers, artists and creative people are as a whole, generous with their praise and liberal with their encouragement. Many writers are as crazy as I am, but they are proud of it and accept it as integral to who they are and they use it to their advantage in their intensely moving writing.
You make me think, you make me laugh and you make me cry. Thank you.
The stuff I have hidden for twenty-years in draws or in computer files marked “Personal, destroy if I’m dead.” can now come out of the dark and play with others on WordPress.com.
I want to thank each and every blogger I have visited; you have each touched my writer’s spirit in one way or another. Thank you for not hiding as I did. Thank you for sharing your joy, your success, your pain and your disasters.
Thank you for commenting on my stuff when you are no doubt as pressed for time as I am, thank you for noticing what I post, whether it’s noontime or midnight.
I have learned that while I’m sometimes different in my approach to writing, I am not unique. My writing is not outrageous, as most people in my family have told me. (Family members who have encouraged me, you know who you are.) Sometimes my writing is raw, but it is always honest and sometimes it’s funny. That’s me and that is okay. You taught me that.
There are so many incredible writers and creators on WordPress.com that my only regret is that I don’t have enough time to read every line you write, to absorb every picture you post.
I have learned that there is a place where I can belong, a niche made just for me, and it is here, with you. I came to try to build a platform and I stayed to share who I am, to meet you and to enjoy your work.
Thank you, Jeanne Marie
https://womenwhothinktoomuch.wordpress.com/2013/05/17/journal-excerpts/
PS We call ourselves girls because when we are together we are girls, laughing and playing.
September 2012
August Is Gone
I thought about it. Maybe I’ll take the month of August off and go to a place where I can be alone and I can think for myself. Make my own decisions. My birthday was last week and I turned fifty-nine. How did I get from twenty-seven to fifty-nine so quickly?
Why did I not realize that not making a decision and sleeping my time away so that I wouldn’t think, was a decision in itself?
The days blur together and the months sneak past, quick as the black racer snake that lives in my garden, slithering by my feet as fast as a bubble can burst.
My bubble has burst many times, but I just waited among the shadows for another bubble to shelter me. There is always another bubble I think and there will always be another August, even though I know that all I have this is very minute.
No, I let another August pass me by and I sit here wondering, how, why? What if that was my last and final August?
It seems like yesterday that I was diapering my babies and now, they are grown.
My arms and my hands are empty and just as surely as my babies grew too large to hold in my arms, August is gone.
Try to stop the
Hands of time,
Hold this moment
For it is mine.
Try to stop the
Silver in my hair,
Stop time’s ravage
Silent as a tear.
The fat that rests
Upon my thighs,
The damned mirror
With reflective lies.
Why don’t I feel
As old as my face?
Of the child inside
I see not a trace.
I cannot stop the
Hands of time,
With each day
Its damages I find.
But time cannot steal
The child inside
It shall not claim
The girl I hide.
by Jeanne Marie
![IMAG1700_1[1]](https://womenwhothinktoomuch.com/wp-content/uploads/2013/06/imag1700_11.jpg)
The easiest way to teach you to elaborate on your skills and talents, is to show you my own resume as an example. After you read this, if you still need help, please email me and I’ll be glad to read over your resume. I’ll even add my own touches to help you enhance it.
Women Who Think Too Much Publications
Publisher, Editor: Jeanne Marie
OBJECTIVE
To obtain a challenging position within your company’s structure while earning above average pay, working part time hours and securing a position with potential for advancement. This will be a second job, so don’t expect too much of me and I hope your objective isn’t to harass me if I’m late for work. Problems that arise at home do have priority.
QUALIFICATIONS
Hands On–I can change dirty diapers, wash baby bottles, wipe the green snot off the face of a runaway child, wash hair that doesn’t want to be washed, nurture your plants and keep your vaporizer clean, full and running.
I’ve washed close to a trillion dishes, changed numerous bed linens, wallpapered and painted nine homes and three apartments, hung curtains with nothing but a butter knife and rearranged extremely heavy furniture. (You do offer health insurance, right? Good! My back has been killing me.)
I’ve over a million hours’ experience in laundry and ironing. I’ve cleaned rugs that have been vomited on by children, guests, dogs or worse, and I’ll vacuum under your desk.
STAMINA
I once spent an entire winter hanging over a vaporizer with a twenty-pound toddler in my hands.
I can go weeks without sleep and still perform my duties.
I’ve cleaned and taken care of three children while my body was down with the flu and my mind was up with the anxiety.
I’ve supervised the same hell raising, fist fighting and bored kids on many cold or rainy days and I have endured over a thousand torturous school vacations. We suffered no fatalities, self-inflicted or otherwise. (And that was before Prozac.)
I’ve moved at least fifty times in thirty-five years, packed, unpacked and carried most of the stuff into and out of the moving truck, then back into the truck and out and in and out…you get the idea, I’m sure. I’ve even been allowed to take one end of the refrigerator. Thankfully, not the end that fell on someone’s knees. Hey, I told him I needed to rest a minute!
NURTURING SKILLS
I can starve a cold and feed a fever with one hand, while blindfolded, hopping on one leg. I’ll bring home-baked goods to work, at least once a week and often I’ll bring a hot meal too. (No, I don’t do it so everyone will like me. Well, maybe I do, so what?)
I know every allergist and pediatrician within a fifty-mile radius and most of the veterinarians.
I can guess your temperature by putting my hand on your forehead and I can nurse you if you get chicken pox, strep throat, diarrhea, the flu, ear infections or a cold. Managing your asthma and seasonal allergies are optional and will cost extra.
I’ve turned filthy, squalid apartments into clean, cozy homes and I’m sure I can do the same for your dumpy office. A few plants, a lot of hard work, a little paint from Wal-Mart and you won’t recognize the place.
NEGOTIATING SKILLS
Superb, due to weekly meetings over a span of twelve years with principals and teachers who wanted to throw my youngest child (the one my own mother wouldn’t baby-sit) out of school. I’ve also learned how to take the blame for my husband and my children’s actions and in the workplace that can be a very helpful tool. If you screw up, I’ll be there, ready and waiting to take the blame.
COURAGE
I’ve had three C-sections, one emergency and two planned.
I work well under pressure and I have bravely gone where most women dare not go–under the beds and into the closets.
I gave my hand (and my brain) in marriage, not once, but twice. Case closed.
JOB HISTORY
FREE LANCE WRITER
My Favorite Awards:
National Dean’s List 1994-1995
Survived Motherhood Without Becoming A Vegetable Award, 1996 (Self Bestowed)
NURSES AIDE, NURSING HOMES
Same as infant care, but duties involved much larger bodies, huge diapers and very odorous bowel movements. Daily contact with lonely people who had raised their kids and sometimes their grandkids, relatives who now visited them once a year. Socializing with people who’d hold onto my hand and beg me to stay when my shift was over because, “You’re all I have.” And it was true.
DAYCARE PROVIDER, MY HOME
Took care of other women’s children for ten years. The working mamas chased a career and I chased after their kids so that I could earn money while staying home with my own little angels. Once, I had three toddlers calling me Mama and my kids were all in school. Daycare had become a safe habit, but that’s when I knew it was time to move on.
WAITRESS\BARTENDER\MANAGEMENT
Slinging hash, taking verbal abuse from customers, carrying huge trays of food over my head most often through narrow aisles, picking up dirty dishes, taking verbal abuse from bosses, serving drinks and always, always, working with a smile on my face. Very similar to mothering, except for the smile.
EDUCATION
Quit school at 15-years old. Earned my GED in 1981 at age 27.
Rogers State College 1994-1995
Twenty-One Credit Hours, achieved under duress. (Re: Article, “When The Kids Grow Up.)
INTERESTS & HOBBIES
INTERESTS
Interested in having a life, thank you! I’m also interested in hiring someone to clean my house. Do you know anyone?
Activities involve thinking too much, writing it down and publishing it. Cleaning too much and hating it.
HOBBIES
My hobbies include photography, planting flowers that should win awards, avoiding baby-sitting or raising any of my fourteen grandkids and fighting with my computer until dawn. (Computer always wins.)
COMPUTER SKILLS
Obviously.
SPECIAL TALENTS, MISCELLANEOUS, FRINGE BENEFITS EXPECTED
SPECIAL TALENTS
I know a resume should be short but as you can see, with all my qualifications and experience that would be impossible. I also type, about 10 words per minute. (I’m very poor on the spelling.) I’m an expert on the phone, unless it’s one of those damn new smart phones. I will run your errands, pay your bills, pick out and sign your Mother’s Day cards.
I also write a blog, short stories, poetry and I am working on two novels and five children’s books.
I can write excellent excuse notes while half asleep, without thinking.
BTW, if I’m up all night writing, I will call in sick the next day.
MISCELLANEOUS
I’m applying by email because I don’t have a power suit. However, I’ll have a personal shopper help me find one if the job requires it. (I seriously hope not.)
I won’t wear pantyhose or high heels, under any conditions!
I’d expect to be reimbursed for the power suit, of course, as a man has always paid for my clothes and I see no reason to change my routine at sixty-two years old. I really do need a second job, even though I don’t have any free time, so I hope you hire me.
FRINGE BENEFITS EXPECTED
At my present job, the hours are long, the rewards are few and I hope you can match the stress level.
As I look back over my forty-year career as a wife, mother, grammy, writer, baby-sitter, nurses’ aide, food server and bartender, I realize that I gave my all; plus energy that I didn’t even have, so I’m really burned out.
Therefore, I hope you have a position where I can sit down and keep my thinking to a minimum. (Did I forget to list my stint as an Avon Lady?) I do need a good health insurance plan, as I’ve used up all the benefits on the one my husband has provided, (particularly, the mental health benefits) and I’d like a “Smoker’s High Risk, Accidentally Started At Age 36, Can’t Quit, Dammit I’ve Tried, So You Pay Off No Matter What, Life Insurance Plan.”
PERSONAL DATA
There have been times when I’ve enjoyed my present job.
Nights when I held my newborns, rocked them until dawn, got a hug from a toddler before breakfast or a homemade card from a first grader.
Even better, handprints pressed forever onto construction paper.
Watching my two beautiful daughters each have their own first baby, (which made me very grateful for my three C-sections).
Watching my son, my baby, turn into a large, handsome teenager and then into a daddy.
Watching my grandchildren grow into amazing little people and then, on to young adults. Being presented with three great grandbabies. These have been the high points.
The little love notes my husband still leaves for me to find when I wake up, the way he does the dishes after supper so that I can write and the neurotic phone calls he makes from work each day to see what I’m doing. (Wow, does he flip out if I don’t turn on the cell phone when I go out!) And I even enjoy the way that he’s still jealous, even though I’m a way past middle-aged woman, twenty pounds overweight and too codependent to ever leave.
I love walking on the beach and reading poetry as the sun sets.
STIPULATIONS
I will relocate if your company pays all the moving expenses and you can talk my husband into moving again. We’ll need extra men to help with the refrigerator as my husband still has nightmares about a refrigerator falling on his legs.
Please, feel free to call me between noon and one o’clock EST any Friday, except if it’s the thirteenth and there’s a full moon.
For all other times, email will suffice because if I’m not home, my computer will take your message. I just hope that it will allow me to access my email without having to be re-booted.
Looking forward to hearing from you, but not too soon,
Jeanne Marie
Women Who Think Too Much by Jeanne Marie 
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