Angie Kinghorn

Bread and banana peels

Trying to outrun the rain, I raced with my kids into the warm haven of the bakery this afternoon.  It’s bright, warm, full of wood and fresh bread and generous samples; simple happiness and carbohydrates set to the tune of the brass bell on the door.

Standing in line, Grant wrapped himself around my left leg, and Anne around my right.  They’re 5, and such random displays of affection are rare enough now that I breathed in the smell of cinnamon, yeast, and grain and simply let us be, enjoying their warmth and closeness as I studied the menu board.

I was stroking their hair and basking in the smell of fresh bread when I heard the first strains of the new song seep through the hidden speakers.

The essence of my father drifted down with the music and landed right in front of me, smiling, whole, young and healthy, dancing and singing the chorus as I’d seen him do a thousand times.

“Sugar pie, honey bunch, you know that I love you!  I can’t help myself, I love you and nobody else!”*

Nobody else noticed the sudden exuberant presence dancing in our midst, not even my children.

I felt my father there, as tangible as the samples of  bread I was feeding the twins, but reaching out for him would win me nothing but air and strange looks.

The song continued to play and I saw my father dance, heard the sound of him happy at the same time I ordered a round loaf of the tomato swiss, and a toaster loaf of the whole grain, please, and oh, you’re kidding, what do you mean you’re out of cookies?

Mommy Automaton took over and I watched as she fed the kids samples of muffins and sweets to find something palatable in lieu of cookies.  All the while I saw her and the children through the flickering images of a home movie memory.  It was set in the basement of my childhood home, with my father’s prized jukebox spinning ‘45s–The Tams, The Four Tops, The Temptations.  He and my mother danced around the hardwood floors until I begged for a turn, and then he spun me around the floor.

As we left the bakery, I cradled those images, remembering in a mix of pain and gratitude before they vanished like smoke.

Grief is a trickster, a hustler, the ultimate con man with the tradecraft of a spy.  He shows up when you least expect him, and no matter how erratically I drive, or how I vary my schedule, I’m resigned that he’ll follow me everywhere.  He’ll wait until I think I’m ok, then set ambushes and place banana peels in my path so that I can fall and feel the excruciating pain of a missing part.

At home, I overheard Anne practicing a song for Daddy’s Day at preschool.

“Daddy Daddy let me say, I love you in every way.

I love you for what you do.

I love you for who you are.

Daddy Daddy, let me see, I love you and you love me.”

Boom.  Banana peel.

 

*I Can’t Help Myself, by The Four Tops

This post is a response to a prompt for the online writers’ group, Write on Edge.

The prompt:  Select an old blog post you’ve written and rewrite it as a memoir piece. You can focus on one element from it, or include them all, depending on what it’s about. Make sure somewhere in your RemembeRED piece you link to the post upon which you’re basing it.

Word limit is 500.

This is the post I used as inspiration.  I labeled it memoir, but it’s most definitely a blog post.  It was written on the first anniversary of my father’s death, and it’s about flashbacks and grief.  As, obviously, is this piece.

http://www.angiekinghorn.com/2010/09/flashback/

Write on Edge: RemembeRED

Mary’s son

Yesterday, on Maundy Thursday, our choir sang a piece that has haunted me since.  It’s about Jesus, but through the lens of his mother, Mary.  The piece spans his life from birth to death, with Mary standing by to offer a mother’s comfort to her son at every juncture.

Each Lenten season we remember Jesus’ suffering, and since I’ve become a mother to a son, I’ve found God’s willingness to sacrifice  his own son that much more amazing.  As I watch my son grow and come to love him more with each day that passes, the idea of loving an entire people enough to give his precious body over to be broken for them … let’s just say my heart isn’t as big as God’s.  I couldn’t do it.  I look at the tender skin at the nape of his neck and I marvel at the scope of God’s love for us.  I couldn’t do it; not for anything.

But yesterday’s service reminded me that Jesus wasn’t just God’s son.  He was Mary’s son.  Mary bore him, raised him, and watched as he was abandoned by his disciples, tried before the Sanhedrin, and then stood at the foot of the cross and watched her beloved son’s hands and feet nailed to the wood.

Could you do it?  As a mother, could you stand there and watch soldiers nail your son (a grown man, but your son nonetheless) to a cross, then jeer as they tortured him with a crown of thorns and pierced his side with a spear?  Could you stand by and watch?

I couldn’t.

Let me share this music with you, because it speaks far more eloquently than I ever could.  Listen to the violin weep.  Hear the lullaby that echoes the ones you’d sing to your own babies.  Prepare yourself for the piano thundering its anger at the mention of Golgatha.  And through it all, imagine that you’re Mary, and that this is your memory, your son.

The piece is called Pietá, by Joseph M. Martin, and you can hear a beautiful rendition of it here.  Please go listen.

Are you crying yet?

Here, let me give you the lyrics:

 In the shadow of a manger,

by a candle’s dancing flame,

tender Mary holds her baby,

and she breathes His holy name.

“Jesus, rest your weary head,

close your weeping eyes.”

As evening falls, she starts to sing a lullaby.

“Lulay, lulay, peace be yours tonight.”

In the shadow of the temple,

in a place so far from home,

Mary sees her child of wonder,

and she marvels how He’s grown.

“Jesus rest your weary head,

and think on gentle things.”

With loving arms she holds her Saviour and she sings,

“Lulay, lulay, peace be yours tonight.”

In the shadow of Golgatha,

underneath a darkened sky,

Mary gently cradles Jesus,

Through her tears she says goodbye.

“Jesus, rest your weary head.

Your work on earth is done.”

And as the darkness falls, she whispers to her son,

“Lulay, lulay, peace be yours tonight.”

 

This music pulls tears from me.  Mother’s tears, as it’s finally hit me just what God (and Jesus, and Mary) sacrificed.  Turn the painting a bit and the fuzzy parts become clear.  I always knew Jesus was a man, but to think of him as a mother thinks of her own son … well, that triggers a whole different set of instincts, and perhaps a whole new level of understanding.

The Good Friday service tonight included a hymn (O Sacred Head, Now Wounded) that summed it up perfectly for me in the last verse:

 

“What language shall I borrow to thank thee, dearest friend,

for this thy dying sorrow, thy pity without end?

O make me thine forever, and should I fainting be,

Lord let me never, never outlive my love to thee.”

No language can possibly be sufficient to thank any of the players in this passion for their sacrifice.  No words could ever be enough.  Tonight I cry, mother’s tears of sorrow mixed with sinner’s tears of joy, for we have all been offered the priceless gift of redemption.
Praise be to God.

Putting a face to postpartum depression

 

The post featured today on BlogHer is Afterbirth.

Postpartum depression resources

My Postpartum Voice

Postpartum Progress (see their post on the symptoms of postpartum depression and anxiety in Plain Mama English)

Band Back Together’s Postpartum Depression Resourcess

Postpartum Support International

For live support from the privacy of your living room, you can find weekly Twitter chats for postpartum depression support.  #PPDChats are held twice every Monday.  My Postpartum Voice gives instructions on how to participate here.

 

Bruises

Before I get to today’s post, I’d like to share a bit of news with you.

I’m incredibly honored and humbled to tell you that last week’s piece, Afterbirth, was chosen to be featured as the Postpartum Voice of the week at My Postpartum Voice.  Please read it, and share it.  You never know who might need it.

 

Now, on to today.

** This is a memoir piece for the online writers’ group Write On Edge.  The prompt:  This week we’d like you to write about a time you found yourself comparing yourself, unfavorably, with someone else.  Focus on how the comparison affected you, negatively or positively. Word limit is 400 words.

The denim encasing their legs was so tight I wondered how any of them retained bloodflow below the hip.  I took another sip of my martini and gazed at all those bird legs lined up on the couch.  I didn’t want to care, but it was second nature.

Perched there, on the edge of the oversized sofa, they made a perfect row of skinny jeans and knee high leather boots.  My martini and I sunk further into the club chair and eyed my jeans with disgust.  My “fat” jeans.  Now tight.

When I stood, my Spanx rolled down, all the way from under my bra-line to my hips.

I made a beeline for the bathroom, but a friend’s husband stopped me to say hello.  All I could think was, “Don’t touch my back!  Don’t touch my back!”

And then I sat in the powder room, sweaty with nerves and the effort of pulling my girdle back into place, thinking that this was much funnier when it happened to Bridget Jones.

It was the sharp smell of of that sweat that brought it back.

He wasn’t even my coach.  What possessed him to tell me, after a grueling workout in the weight room (after an equally grueling workout on the volleyball court) that I would be so much better if I could just lose ten pounds?

I remember where we were standing, the feel of my sticky t-shirt as the air conditioning slowly turned it cold.  I remember the smells of adolescent sweat and please-God-let-this-sport-help-me-get-into-college that clung to the very walls of the weight room and the gym complex.

And I remember, moments before, calves and quads burning as I did jump-squats, feeling like I owned my body, like I’d never been stronger, like I could climb the fucking world if I wanted to.

I walked out of that weight room a lion, relishing the feeling of my own skin.  And he followed me into the hallway, and with one comment, turned me into a cowering kitten.

Not for the next few minutes.

For the next 18 years.

The irony is that when he made that comment, I’d never been stronger, thinner, or in better shape.  Daily team workouts had me spending two hours after school working my ass off.  Because I was competitive.  I worked hard.  My teammates teased me because when I dove for a ball, they had to stop the game to dry the sweat off the floor.  It bothered me at first, but I learned to brush it off and say, “Hey, I work hard.”  Because I did.

After our conversation, I found myself in the bathroom changing to go home.  I peeled off my t-shirt and saw an image from a funhouse mirror.

I began to do that every day when I got dressed.  My friends were no longer my friends, but measuring sticks to hold myself against.  All because this coach, somebody everyone trusted, someone who ought to know, said I needed to lose ten pounds.

I’m guessing he doesn’t even remember.  That he doesn’t even remember me.  That he’ll never read this.

But I hope the people who do will think about what they say to young girls.

That sticks and stones thing?  Bullshit.

Words hurt, and the bruises they leave can last a lifetime.