Tag Archives: fetal alcohol

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ToeNail FungUS

Injustices, victimization,
oppression and other yucky events
of diverse varieties,
are like toe nail fungus:
1. both alarming and embarrassing
2. who knows where it came from
3. we would appreciate it if it would return
from wherever to whatever,
as long as it’s away from me.

My kids taught me everything I never wanted to know
about the sufferings of injustice,
while my husband taught me everything I never wanted to know
about the inadequacies of my pathetic attempts at mercy.

“What happened to the chicken casserole
that was still cooling?!”

I used to believe this was a reasonable question
that I should rationally answer.

“Well, Ms. Fetal Alcohol Daughter
decided to eat it without using her hands,
because you told her not to touch anything.
That’s why her face looks like the remnants of baked chicken,
mashed potatoes,
and I believe the green stuff might be peas
from ear to ear and a spot on her forehead
and all over her chin,
although her hands remain surprisingly pristine.”

However, over the sometimes tumultuous years
of further victimization and mutual oppression,
I have learned to hear these questions,
about domestic and other political suffering and loss
loudly exclaiming injustice,
as rhetorical opportunities.

“As a kindness to you
I choose to pretend that was a rhetorical question.
Because we seldom really want to know
from whence comes toenail fungus,
or any other of the diverse angry adolescent behaviors
causing cosmic dissonance
and climatic behavioral disorders
as they are doing their best with defiant-compliance.”

I don’t know, it just feels kinder to say it,
and see self-neglect of wise choices,
this way.

Makes me feel a little more
like WildYeast absorbing nutritious toenail fungus.

1. Embarrassed and Terrified by my own failures to actively love healthy choices,
all the time,
with every co-fungus I meet.
in each moment of oppositionally defiant dialectical opportunity for redirection
through basic regenerative/degenerative, co-arising MidWay=TippingPoint=Yang/Yin wu-wei
reiterative dipolar attendance
to co-empathic bilateral balance.

2. Not really wanting to spend a lot of time thinking about my own climatic interior and exterior landscape history;
health-and-safety issues of self-and-other neglect.

3. Feeling like we already nondually co-arise in this permaculturally regenerative, health-revolving repurposing normative-natural value, merit, worth, dignity, honor, purpose, ecotherapy, coempathic ToeNail Fungus DeComposition, as we cogravitate back where EcoParasitic Elders were comin’ from:
your wealth evolves from where you ecologically invest your feet,
avoid infestation,
keep them movin’ across healthy soil
in clean water
breathin’ fresh breezes.

Wild Yeast
breathing in ecosystemic nutrients
breathing out toenail fungus.

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February Winds

Sunday morning
time for sabbath sacraments.

He steps out into a gusty wind,
some fat splattering sweeps of raindrops
falling across his porch roof
on down through the roaring river valley,
forcing, then ebbing
storm of February wind with rain,
a wondrous primal pair,
he adores.

The birds have started liturgical dance
and songs of ritual and regeneration
without him.
Already flying up in quick dives of floating play
with speaking time,
singing back to Brother Wind
howling on his way.

Calling, chanting cantors, conjoining
swelling sacred song of anti-gravity
for co-arising blissful sweeps of sound,
karmic atmosphere swirling time-rich
sacred rites across his house-bound skin.

Sound of incense sweeps down his river,
north to south with warmer hopes and economic intentions,
reminding it was his time for political baptism.

She incanted from the bathtub
in short gusts of warm blast enculturation,
joining his internal gospel choir,
chirping her oppositional descant
challenging and prophesying and occupying
in full-voiced roar of need
as want
right now,
and seldom bothering a please,
much less a thanks
for caring as best he could
to hear her oppostional rhythms and patterns,
irritating flows of hard-blown breath
with attitude.

Storming and brewing
birds cheering rage in her brain
shouting at co-arising gravity
to blow another way
with her exegetical universe,
her way,
the only way
she can imagine
to function in a reverse and upside down
political world of unheard powerlessness
when inside
she can only find her loud-voiced demands
to turn life around,
spin this slippery wind of Earth
to blow in her right liturgical way.

Baptism completes this wind drenched requiem
of full-life as anti-death survival
to cooperate this week’s regenerate vocational intent
and ecopolitical practice.

She joins her dad
for one last look
through jaundiced eye
at drenching rain that could fly back
from whence it came
if only wiser timed to start this day.

Birds now pray their benedictions
quietly in wind-protected nests
while he listens to swollen postlude protest
against co-gravitating time,
uprooting old rooted systems
decayed for newer octave use
as compost fading into swaying trees
waving back to join upriver’s grace of windblown time,
and forth to rejoin downriver’s centering roots
through February’s purging Earth
decomposing dance.

He closes his door to time’s external grace
to watch a smile warmly cross her chronic face
like a gust of refreshing wind
through a rainy karmic life.

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Conversational Ecstasy

I believe SuperEgo bicameral comprehension
functions, forms, and flows organic
ecotherapeutic integrity;
I believe balanced Left-Right consciousness
orbits toward ecstatic psychology.

I’ve got nothin’ to say
And I’m gonna keep it just that way
’til my mean old SuperEgo
lets me go outside to play.

Imagine with me for a moment,
if you would be so generous,
god as not only love
but also the most joyful joy we could be,
cooperatively networked together.

And why do I want to play this imagination game
with you
or even without you?
What is this joy of which you speak?
I know peace in silent music
and wind and surf,
but is therapy of sound this joy?

Perhaps not quite enough,
maybe only halfway here.
We grow toward pregnant Now becoming being joy
with you.

While I assume this will not be news
I need to remind you
that your presence does not always feel like gift,
source of joy,
not so much really,
sometimes more painful to my drift.

Yes, I know.
But, it brings me joy to recall
in our more dissonant crash
that I feel precisely the same suffering way
about your sorry ass.

Perhaps you should find a different therapist.
One who evolves less sure of god as graced-love
and much more joy,
one not so sure your God is humor,
Eco-ing DNA’s RNA CommonSense.

If I understand your cynicism
I might write your song,
“I’ve got nothin’ to say
And I’m gonna keep it just that way
’til my mean Ol’ Dad
lets me go outside to play.“

Your issues with remembering who I am
rather than who you thought I would be
seem not too distant clarity
or even acceptance,
but your troubling habit of editing my opera
into your joyful musical comedy,
this tangles our melodic frequencies
and harmonic function.

How can I reach heavenly you
when all day through
you bind me to
your flight toward unEarthy game wars,
your fear of losing rich rewards,
blockade toward joy,
your life your toy
to blindly scream away?

How could I throw away this toy
you never gave me?
My defeats,
static surrenders to right-now desire,
or lack thereof,
steer me far clear of your enchantment
with ecstatic joy.

What is your purpose
when Earth’s becoming
is your wise Being,
if your Being
is not also Earth’s meaningful becoming?
If you are not part of Earth’s mindful nature
then Humane Being cannot naturally co-arise,
develop,
regenerate.
Your becoming cannot be not Our becoming,
my Being fades when we are not We
together.

What is this to me
your wilting Earth
and flat-line monopolistic dark comedy?
My joy turns tragedy to operatic outcomes.
What you label Oppositional Disorder
I hear as contending Cognitive Dissonance,
hoping for a Draw someday,
someplace away.

What you find unnaturally cacophonous
confuses my spirited silence.
Your values are not Ours
on my side of your Oppositional Divide,
my values are my own,
and I am free of Win, Lose, or Draw cultures
and competing for scarcity gamesmanship,
Our Truth as Consequence game
contains our Tug of War.
Imagine with me
in this Eternal Moment
your Ego filled with endless joyful joy
as you pull all Earth toward finish line
and you are confidently winning
your Boddhisatva Interdependent Challenge.
Even should you not choose releasing survival’s course rope,
you have full faith that We are winning
and this joy will never end.
Your Being has become,
your response fulfills your stimulus of birth,
your effect regenerates your course’s cause,
your What Ifs? echo and mirror your What Are We?,
all Earth recreates your joy.

I’ve got nothin’ to say
And I’m gonna keep it that way
’til my mean ol’ life pilgrimage
through dissonant pathology
let’s me go outside to play.

That does indeed sound operatic.

Right, and not so much joyful joy
this side of my playground.
See ya.
Wouldn’t wanna be ya.

Oh, but you are,
except your opera damns divine divas,
weeping and shrieking in off-stage wings
of perpetually-coming purgatory,
while Earth’s musical comedy,
reenacts all that drama on your Win-Lose playground,
where Her Sun ain’t bringin’ no bad news
all eternal day.

Why do you always need to have the last word,
the last line?

We have a shared last line.

No, you just did it again,
with the We thing.

Yes We did.

I’m closing the door now.

Yes We are.

Hopeless.

Joyless.

Can I maul your head?

Our head.

My head.

Imagining with We
brings joy.

LAAAAAAAAAST WORD! HA!

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My Daughter, Monae

My daughter, Monae, has Oppositional Disorder, which I think would more appropriately be called Oppositional Ordering Everybody Around, and has proven herself belligerently averse to some of life’s niceties, like depositing her poo and pee in the potty rather than the floor or chair or bed.

This toxic trend is further complicated by her misfortune of having hooked up with a gay male dad who is obviously a slow learner.

I knew nothing about little girls, nor did I want to change that status, when the State of Connecticut invited me to kennel Monae at age five.

My active disinterest in any form of intimacy with girls, of whatever size, may be why Monae’s Social Worker picked me out of her line up. Knowing Monae is not the least bit shy about imperiously demanding immediate satisfaction of her always urgent whimsy, the State’s wisdom correctly predicted that Monae was not at risk of any lascivious acquiescent response to any post-puberty preferences that might come her full-bodied way.

Oh, wait, I once again give the Social Worker too much credit, there was no line waiting for Monae because she has Fetal Alcohol Syndrome and everyone else shopping for Monaes to decorate their lives, homes, and families knew that this girl child might be pooing and peeing wherever and whenever she pleased for as long as it pleased her to do so.

There was nobody in front of me or beside me, waiting to catch Monae’s mess, although there were three or four foster parents behind me who were jumping out of their worn-out skins to help me get Monae into my home as quickly as possible so they wouldn’t have to smell her, and feed her, and listen to her endless litany of urgent demands, and the kangaroo jumping in the middle of the night, ever again.

No one, or even two, foster homes could stand living with her, I found out too late, so she was a foster home circuit rider, rotating her weekly infestations.

However, Monae, now a teenager would proudly. and inevitably too loudly, announce to her friends, if she had any, that she has been my girl for nearly a decade now. She would not be troubled by any full disclosure compunction to mention that our home has by no means been the same house all these years. When she fills one up we either have to give up breathing or move somewhere else.

Monae is a hoarder. It started with food. She specialized in spilling milk under the bed for awhile. Perhaps she was confused about that expression about spilling milk and crying parents, but it took off and generalized to shredding newspapers and books, the larger the better, sprinkling cooked rice and noodles on the rug, then mashing them in with her bare feet, throwing Tinker Toys and Lincoln Logs and paint brushes wall to wall, then opening jars of acrylic paint, emptying them onto the brushes because, after all, why else would they be called paint brushes if they were not meant to be painted. and how else would one get that paint out of the jar without getting your hands totally icky, except she tried that first, thinking finger painting would be the way to go, but she didn’t like the way the paint tasted or looked on her formerly pink poodle skirt costume, although it was kinda good on the saddle shoes, which she wasn’t wearing, because she refuses to wear shoes or socks in the house, or car, so she had to find them in the piles of stuff that she found where it clearly didn’t belong, in her closets and drawers, then put them on to paint them so they would still go with the poodle skirt which was now a more festive pink and mahogany, or maybe burgundy, probably all three.

Ivy and I have been discussing politics.

I was advocating more restraint in response to her frequent excavations in my closets, looking for more resources for her scrap piles and garbage dumps she is growing quite abundantly in her bedroom. And, I was protesting her nightly raids into our refrigerator and cupboards to add more fuel to her private stores, and her lack of clearly defined policies to clean up her own mess, and her annoying addiction to turning on any electronic device of any kind, turning up all volume levels to full blast, including blood-curdling screams and howls and stinky air-polluting farts far louder than those of any other nation, or person, and her obsession with flipping on all lights of any kind, interior and exterior, never mind that its noon, and her addiction to driving to anything retail, with market trend histories favoring toy stores and any outlet that could produce anything resembling food faster than she could swallow it, requiring as little chewing activity as possible, because chewing burns calories and her short-term economic strategy is to absorb and hoard with as little loss and sharing as possible.

I asked her why she thought these behaviors should be acceptable to other members of our diverse family. She said she learned them at her school.

“Oh, right, in your U.S. History class.”

“No, I don’t listen in that class; in capitalism class.”

“You mean writing class.”

‘No capital is what everything starts with until you get to the end of a period. Then you have to start over again with more capital that you try to find in other peoples’ closets.”

“Maybe you’ve combined your writing class with U.S. history. You’re treating our home like foreign territory to be sucked into your personal magic queen-bee nest.”

“No, Dad, I learned that from you.”

 

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Princess Drivy Crazy

Princess Drivy Crazy stares cross-eyed alone with internal voices driving her flight toward our unsuspecting future, then throws her oppositionally challenged head back, swelling adolescent breasts, her proud ripeness out and up and forward, arching her back, ecstatic smile broadcast across gleaming black-glazed bipolar pupils, grateful for language not too foreign, “Princess, I do so love you, today and always feel and know sure passion in your joy, your beauty, goodness, your rightness, your hopeful path of humor lest you tear from memorized neglect, depraved cultural confinement,” responding without access to s and l, “A**ho**!” she laughs, to please and thank-you in our we-discovering way.

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My Intentionally Dysfunctional Family

My family doesn’t dine together, or separately, for that matter. We forage; a throwback to earlier hunting and gathering tribes.

Each of us waits for the kitchen coast to clear. Then we quietly slip through the pantry shelves, the refrigerator, than poke through each others’ favorite hoarding places, each thinking we are the only one who knows all the others’ not-so-secret spaces for hiding red raspberries, sugar packets, peanut butter chocolate chip cookies that I baked myself, saltine crackers with extra salt, salt-licks, lemon used-to-be-meringue pie.

Then, having gathered our harvest, not even trying for a balanced meal, the object of the feeding game is to eat our fill, before the others, of whatever we are concerned they might get to before we do. It appears to be optional whether we scrounge for a clean fork or spoon or maybe just a straw, or just select whatever utensil is on the top of the dirty dishes.

Rather than mindfully gathering to dine we practice foraging, separately, sometimes competitively, looking over our shoulder for the always possible stalking predator. Each other. My 12-year-old fetal alcohol, square-brained daughter, Ivy, howls her alarm that I’m eating her last peanut butter chocolate chip cookie, which is true, except it was never hers until she takes a bite out of it.

She’s learned from this, though, so now as I forage through the pantry and in her chest of drawers and under her mattress, I often find a saltine here, a fruit and grain bar there, unwrapped with no more and no less than precisely one perfectly articulated Ivy bite missing, to mark her territory.

We take our food standing. It’s easier to slink out that way should one of my teenage sons decide to rise before noon to hunt and slurp his way toward an overdue shower. In fact, I’m not sure we even have a dining table. That could be what’s in the dining area hopelessly buried under last year’s laundry, but I’m not sure. I think the pile would be higher if that were a table. More likely a mattress or even an entire bed that never quite made it into any of our several bedrooms when we last moved away from our last laundry pile, which, by the look of things was perhaps a bit too long ago. Time to move again….

Ivy, with the Fetal Alcohol Syndrome, and a generous mix of cerebral palsy, and an under-bite so bad that for her the rules for chewing and swallowing successfully are like horseshoes. Close counts, including near misses onto the floor, her school dress, her shoes, if she wore them, so, OK, her feet, or spread across her beaming face giving full witness to each entry on her latest menu, causing the occasional unlucky guest to wonder if she was trying to eat with her nose, and eyes, and sometimes even her ears.

Ivy’s oldest brother calls her Poison Ivy and the middle brother calls her Demon Child, but only if she appears to be listening, which isn’t really all that often, and her youngest brother “D” calls her nothing at all, ever. D has never found a word he wanted to say so he just grunts and growls, shouts and mostly laughs at us, so we laugh back with him, often amusing him all the more. No further language needed or welcomed, in D’s way of seeing our world.

Ivy is just like the Mynah Birds in a Disney movie. Mine!!!!! Mine, mine, mine, mine, mine! Mine, mine, mine….  Mine!! Then D laughs at her. Then we laugh with D and Ivy asks “Wha’o unny?” hoping its her. I never know quite how to respond. I guess its us, together; we are funny together.

Ivy also has Oppositional Disorder, although why its called that I don’t know. She most vociferously does not have any disorder in her capacity for opposing everything, including my opposition that the bowl of granola with plain yogurt must be mine because I’m the one who is actually eating it. So then she responds, and not so clearly, because her teeth and tongue have trouble finding each other just right, that the bowl is hers, after all, I’m not eating the trough-sized red ceramic bowl itself, yet.

At the end of her last school year–which, if there were any justice in the world, would have been one day before the beginning of her next school year–Ivy came home with an awards certificate from her school. In recognition for outstanding Self-Advocacy. Interesting, I remember my 6th grade teacher called Self-Advocacy being a bratty know it all. Well, like father, like daughter. I just couldn’t be more proud.

Everything is MINE! for Ivy. My deodorant, my hats and shirts, my boxers, my car, bike, lawnmower, yard, house, job (OK, I don’t really have one of those), but most especially my laptop. I have been trying to teach her that at least some of those things are ours, not “mine” in the sense that I have any desire to exercise sole proprietorship over the use of the lawnmower, for example. A message that oldest and middle sons also have trouble understanding, but for very different reasons. Like, it’s too hot and there are too many gnats flying around my sweaty head because I slept all morning and was busy hunting and gathering and feeding til just now!

The other day I invited Ivy to go into our bathroom and sit on the toilet, although she had already peed in her pull-up, so, probably too late. As always, Ivy was opposed to this idea because she didn’t need to use the toilet. So I told her the toilet was mine and she should stay out of my bathroom. That got her up and waddling over toward our bathroom, with her soppy pull-up hanging halfway to her knees. Clearly, she was right, why use the toilet when you have this handy sponge right down there on your business?

Ivy is jealous of D because he gets all the hugs and attention that should rightly go to her as the chronological baby of the family. If I give D a hug or a peck on his forehead and she catches him showing his dimple in response, I too often hear, Mine!!!!! Mine, mine, mine, mine, mine! Mine, mine, mine….  Mine!! But, she is even more jealous of my laptop. It absorbs far too much of my attention, sucking me away from her, sucking on my forehead while drooling into my eyes, which is what she calls kissing. Well, actually she calls it mauling because I made the mistake of telling her that her kisses were more like being mauled. This, of course, she was not at all opposed to. Mauling seems like the way to go. Anyway, lately her strategy has been to ask me if I am done typing yet so she can use her kapu’er. 

“No, the laptop is mine and you are not to touch it.”

Oops. Wrong response. Next time I went past my laptop, Ivy was mauling it, and doing her oppositional and territorial best to take a bite out of it.

 

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