Tag: Mother

Lightly Child, Lightly.

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But I also knew that the most intimate relationship is not mutual. It is one-way: the mother’s relationship to the child. The best part of my life had been this animal intimacy, the secretion of my milk into this body, the teaching how to lift food to the mouth, how to speak, how to show love according to the feeling of love, how to put on a shoe, how to pick up a spoon, how to wipe one’s own tears, how to piss and shit and be clean. Nothing, nothing in the world like that. That absolute authority of which the baby must be convinced in order to feel safe, separate from the mother’s body. The honor the mother must give the baby, when the baby is ready to know that her absolute authority was never real. The careful timing of the revelation that, baby, you are alone, as alone as anything can be. How lucky you were, baby, to have been a baby with its mother. Now you are ready to start living life in the imagination, to start imagining your way back to every good feeling you don’t quite remember from the days of milk.

— Sarah Manguso, Liars: A Novel (Hogarth, July 23, 2024)

Notes:

  1. Book Reviews of “Liars”
  2. Post Title & Inspiration: Aldous Huxley: “It’s dark because you are trying too hard. Lightly child, lightly. Learn to do everything lightly. Yes, feel lightly even though you’re feeling deeply. Just lightly let things happen and lightly cope with them.

Epilogue: All Doubts Gone

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And so here we are, with an update to yesterday’s post: “Walking. All Self-Doubt…Gone.”

We do have a Disney ending to this debacle, and I can hear all the joyful tittering rattling the internet grid.

And for the record, let me acknowledge three courageous followers of high character who did not buckle to all of the others (aka Girl-Power-Club) who relayed this sentiment in one form or another: “I’m disappointed DK, in your failure to be a Man.” Talk about a gut punch, right?

And Yes, a happy ending. But, no, don’t get ahead of yourself. I didn’t make a follow-up trip and drag the water soaked timber out of the water. And no, Cara didn’t get and won’t get an apology, not now or ever. What’s right is right, and I’m right. (again)

And, when it is the darkest, you can always count on your Family to be there when you need them most.

Cara’s 16 year old Son JJ came to the rescue.

Continue reading “Epilogue: All Doubts Gone” →

Walking. With Ellie.

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Good morning from Connecticut. Today, makes it 1,467 consecutive (almost) days on this daybreak morning walk at Cove Island Park. Like in a Row.

We were primed for another rant following last week’s diatribe: “Ladies Give Me Your Best Shot.” All the targeted Ladies (aka Sawsan) went scurrying back to her Den (with her Broom). Her replacement, while not an total embarrassment, is on her way to earning that merit badge shortly.

So, there’s one Lady left standing. I asked Susan if I can share more specifics about her OCD, that being her neuroses with light switches at the top and bottom of the stairs. Wally and I got a hostile reaction, and decided that this was a red line not to be tested.

I walk, wandering, ruminating. What shall we blog about today? Is it…

  • How I gained 10 lbs in 10 days? (Cake!)
  • How my insomnia has progressively deteriorated during the same period? (Cake?)
  • Why my Doctored-ordered Glucose test (a pre-diabetic alert) reported an alarming upward trend? (Cake?)

I walk.

I noodle these issues (and others), feeling the weight of their drag.

Continue reading “Walking. With Ellie.” →

The Saskatchewan shuffle

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As I held her, I rocked back and forth, swaying left foot to right. My mother told me that her mother, raised on a farm north of Saskatoon, had called this the Saskatchewan shuffle. But every mother knows it, that swaying. Every mother calls it something. Sometimes you will see a woman doing it instinctively, her arms empty, when she hears the crying of a stranger’s baby.

— Leslie Jamison, Splinters: Another Kind of Love Story (Little Brown and Company, February 20, 2024)

Notes: NY Times Book Review by Kate Dwyer: “The High Priestess of the Personal.” Photo: Kristina Paukshtite

Lightly Child. Lightly.

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The trees you planted in childhood have grown too heavy. You cannot bring them along. Give yourselves to the air, to what you cannot hold.

— Rainer Maria Rilke, from “Sonnets to Orpheus, Part One, IV” in “In Praise of Mortality: Selections from Rainer Maria Rilke’s Duino Elegies

Notes:

  • Thank you Beth for poem at Alive on All Channels
  • DK Photo, Monday, October 16, 2023 @ 6:21am @ Cove Island Park. More pictures from that morning’s walk here.
  • Post Title & Inspiration: Aldous Huxley: “It’s dark because you are trying too hard. Lightly child, lightly. Learn to do everything lightly. Yes, feel lightly even though you’re feeling deeply. Just lightly let things happen and lightly cope with them.