poems

Good Grief-What a Month I’m Having!

~ TheCobblersDaughter ~ Leave a comment

I don’t know about you, but I couldn’t wait to say buh-bye to 2015. It was another year of being single, working my butt off in production more so than writing, and selling the home I had lived in for almost a decade with my former husband and our kids. I spent some time free-lance writing and even submitted work to journals. In April I participated in the poem-a-day movement, and in November, I spent a wonderful weekend with two of my best friends at a writing workshop in Port Townsend. But as Christmas songs played in the dentist office, gas stations and department stores, my optimism fell like a snowflake.

New Year’s Eve was spent with my ten-year-old son Vinny and another best friend, my sister from another mister, Aimee. I’d had a daughter disappointment right before the New Year, which I’d rather not disclose, but believed that 2016 would be a better year! But not long after my holiday vacation ended, I had a personal disappointment. Normally I don’t let life get me down; but when it rains, it pours, and I have lost my umbrella.

Suffice it to say, a blog is a safe space to share. But part of me thinks no one wants to hear my problems. And others tell me that I am the only person who can control my life. I need to make changes. I need to read self-help books. I need to let things go. I need to be honest about my needs. Saying those things and doing them are as different as heat and cold.

And I don’t want to be negative. I want to offer life-affirming tips for dealing with everyday disappointments. But right now, all I have is advice from others. I write to understand my life, so I’ve been working on an “after the divorce” essay and several poems. I’ve been talking to every friend who will listen. I’m sure I’m a real treat.

Last week, after hearing of my so-called disappointments, I turned into a Peanuts character, walking along the street with my head down. While kicking a stone, the toe of my boot stuck to the sidewalk and I fell face-first on the concrete. I cracked the glass on the front of my iPhone and my ego. It was the perfect end to a perfect week.

On a bright note, I finished a book called What Shamu Taught Me About Life, Love and Marriage by Amy Sutherland. What a pleasure it was to read. Sutherland talks about positive reinforcement and rewarding behavior–stuff from psych 101, but with real life examples. She observed aspiring animal trainers that work with predators, ones that can tear arms off or kill people with a bite to the neck.

Basically I learned to ignore bad behavior, a daughter screaming in my face, or a client criticizing my brochure, and reward good behavior: Thank you for picking up your dirty socks, Daughter, and Thank you, Client, for your feedback. I’m writing this in its simplest form, but feel free to check it out yourself. I’m going to reread the book.

My plan moving ahead, and you know I have one, is to dress for success, support, not enable, my daughters, and build character in my son. I will breathe deeply before walking into a difficult situation, smile when I don’t feel like smiling, and write as much as possible. Let’s hope February is a better month.

 

Smoking With My Brother

~ TheCobblersDaughter ~ Leave a comment

You left us at 21—brown leather jacket and
blue jeans, feathered hair parted down the middle,
freckles, the bright green eyes you got from
our mother. I never wondered if her leaving
broke you, smoking and drinking by 12,
popping pills by 13, dealing drugs in your
Windsor knot and dress pants to the stoners
at our catholic school just down the block
from home. You worshiped the Doors,
danced with the gangly arms and wild heart
of a rock star, and Dad imagined you’d run off
to join a band and never come back—like her.

After your wreck on that rainy night, we found
your box of poems, foretelling a life that would
end before you aged. “Never trust anyone over
30,” the hippies once chanted, and you would
have raised your fist right alongside them.

Dear brother, this year you would be 49, far
too old to trust—and yet, I would still follow
your hunched shoulders all the way down
to the creek slithering behind Grandma’s,
pack of lifted Winston 100s and box of matches,
I’d perch beside you on a flat rock, light
the cigs against the wind, and not yet knowing
how to inhale, but so you’d think I was as cool
as I believed you to be, hold the smoke in my mouth
as long as I could stand, the stale taste of tobacco,
cotton and paper mixing on my tongue, pretend.

I’ve Been Away Too Long–So, Here’s a Poem

~ TheCobblersDaughter ~ Leave a comment

Barbie Dolls on Drugs

I was twelve and you were six, and we spent
every Tuesday night together for a year.
Your mother at Weight Watchers, your
father driving truck, we watched the Wizard of Oz
so often we knew the script by heart, and when
we tired of TV, we invented games. You had
a huge playroom with the Barbie Townhouse,
and a whole town of Barbies. One was the mother,
and one the daughter who stayed out all night,
came home naked, platinum blond hair
a tangled wreck. Mama Barbie screamed,
“Where have you been?” Daughter said,
“I don’t even know what’s going on.”
They slapped faces with right-angled arms,
and Daughter pulled on a sparkly gown
and hopped away with her plastic suitcase.

Days later, your mother asked to talk
to me, said, “No more Barbies on Drugs,
please.” If she would have been nosier, she
might have discovered I got the idea from
the live show I watched at home, starring
my teenage brother and young stepmother,
sparring, yelling, my brother’s frequent
vanishing acts. But I know now your mother
was trying to keep your dad from disappearing.

All these years later, you and I are still
best friends, and I’m both sad and grateful
for my youthful ignorance–your house was an escape
from my own, where I dropped in a video tape,
air-popped some popcorn, and sat with you
to watch a young girl find her way back home.

A Glimpse Into Wilson’s Disease

~ TheCobblersDaughter ~ 1 Comment

The Assumption

My husband Harly thought he had the flu,
felt lethargic and never wanted to eat.
I just thought he was lazy. After hauling
bags of grass seed all day at the local plant,
he’d flop down on our couch, slather Vicks
on his chest, cuddle with our baby girl
and watch Barney. He stayed up late into
the night playing TechnoBowl, chest pains,
tingling in his joints, then fell asleep, TV
blaring, lamps aglow. He never left the house
except to work, and when he pressed his calves,
he left fingerprints. After his stools lost color,
we saw doctors who dosed him, told him eat less,
walk more. It was a nurse who noticed
the golden hue of his eyes and skin, insisted
on a blood test that showed a liver gone bad.

I drove us back to our modest home in our town
of a thousand. Harly sat in the passenger seat,
sniffing—a twenty-seven-year-old man
who would need a specialist, tests, a transplant.
But right then, all he needed was to hear
the radio play Tom Petty, to rest his head
on my chest. He smelled of sweat and soap.
I’d never seen him cry in the time we’d been
together, but over the next six months,
as he watched his baby girl scream through
her own blood tests, his brother lose his life
to the same disease, his own body wither
from broad-chested and strong to brittle
and thin, I’d wipe them away, one by one,
as they blended into his yellowed cheeks.

How Young Do Kids Learn Empathy?

~ TheCobblersDaughter ~ Leave a comment

Salt dough

My daddy died, says the four-year-old girl—
squishing and smashing lilac salt dough
into sea stars and snowmen at the daycare
craft table. She licks her fingers. Don’t eat the dough,
the caregiver says. A boy in a blue and green
striped shirt stacks blocks. The girl eyes
other kids’ paintings of mommies, daddies,
kids and dogs. My daddy died, she repeats,
looking around. The boy turns his stringy-haired
head her way, eyes her from her wavy bangs
to her purple fingers. I don’t have a dad, he offers.
Never met him. The caregiver tilts her head,
half-smiles. The boy rests the last block on the stack,
watches the tower weave before it falls to the table
with a boom and clack. He runs to the boy’s room.

The girl lifts a rounded mound of salt dough,
makes sure no one is watching, takes a bite.

Happy Anniversary–Suede: A Collection of Poetry

~ TheCobblersDaughter ~ Leave a comment

Nearly two years ago, my beloved father (and best friend) passed away from a severe lung infection. Had he not contracted TB from an employee in his early fifties, he might not be dead. This employee did not divulge her disease while she worked for him. He found out later. And my father’s TB stayed dormant for years. When it finally blew up, he almost died (but that’s another blog post). His entire life he’d battled asthma, and he used to joke, “These lungs are going to be the death of me.” It’s a shame that the careless act of an employee may have caused his death. Because of the scarring on his lungs caused by the TB, doctors said he could not survive the surgery needed to cure his lung infection. But I digress.

The book Suede: A Collection of Poetry is dedicated to my father because his death prompted me to dig out fifteen years’ worth of poems and finish the book. My older brother Tony, my father’s namesake, was killed in a motorcycle accident when I was eighteen. He is the subject of several poems. Loss has defined much of my life. And while many of the poems in Suede include loss, some talk about childhood, love, lust and sex, family, and some even discuss abuse. I write in simple, image-driven language, because that’s what I know. My father, with his high school education, read all my poetry and understood my poems. They are not lofty. I call myself a “blue-collar” poet. I published Suede for my father and my brother. Perhaps you or someone you know might like it. http://bit.ly/WE66YU

Birthday Poem–The Week My Father Was Dying

~ TheCobblersDaughter ~ 1 Comment

The Week My Father Was Dying

The week my father was dying, I fell in love with him—
again. When I was six, I’d proposed, scrawled
I love Daddy over the wood benches in the back
of his shoe repair shop, carved hearts into the
hard plastic of the sewing machine table. 

But the week my father was dying, shrunken frame
slouched in the fort of pillows and sheets on the giant
hospital bed in his living room, oxygen tank in the corner,
his black hair was combed straight, almond-shaped
eyes wide as a child’s, toothy smile yellow and straight.

I stood in the kitchen scooping chocolate ice cream
into a bowl, covered the mound in crushed pineapple.
I felt him staring, so looked over and waved. Up
to his neck in blankets, it took him forever to lift
his big old hand from beneath the fort to wave back. 

I have his hands, and feet. It’s enough to have his wiry
hair, scratchy voice, flat Italian nose, and stubborn streak—
but why the chimp-like hands and feet with every
toe the same size? I want to pluck them off with
the pincer pliers he used to rip the soles off shoes.

He once told me, “You couldn’t be more like me if you tried.”
I drink to excess, choose damaged lovers, live 3000 miles
away from family. But the week my father was dying, I sat
with him, said, Everything good about me came from you.

You’re my best friend, I said, and I love you.
Thank you, he said. Some kids don’t feel that way about their dads.
I laughed out loud, rested my arms around the declining
slopes of his shoulders. He felt so small.

meandaddy

Writing to Heal and to Feel Connected

~ TheCobblersDaughter ~ Leave a comment

When you’ve had experiences such as mine–emotional, physical, and sexual abuse during childhood–you can choose to ignore the pain or zap its power through the written word. Yes, it’s scary.

I write to share my experiences with others to create a sense of community. Because when I read the work of others who have had experiences similar to mine, I feel less alienated and less “freakish.” In the words of John Lennon: “It’s not just me.”

Today I learned that my best friend, a therapist, lent my poetry book Suede to a client, who was able to use my poetry as inspiration to write her own healing poems. That, my friends is what it’s all about. Let’s continue to form a community of writers, readers and healers. Let’s make each other feel more connected.

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Moving My Blog to WordPress

Dad and two kids
~ TheCobblersDaughter ~ Leave a comment

Hello, friends:

For all of you who’ve stood by me since my blog Against All Odds, I am moving the Cobbler’s Daughter blog to WordPress. Stay tuned for more poetry, stories about the Leather Shoe Shop, my children, and whatever life hands me.

More to come!

Love you all.

Cindy

joevandal

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