my Everyday Memoir

My Life is Over (Whaaa–aaah)!

July 2nd, 2008 by Karen, under Cards, Half Moon Bay. 2 Comments

I didn’t get invited.

A while back, I posted how I love cards, how I have a bit of a collection. I thought it would be fun to share them with my blog friends via snail mail. The last card is on its way to DeeDee as we speak. If you want me to send this one to you, be the first one to email me at kcrone@gmail.com. Don’t be shy or you’ll miss out on the social event of the year!

How to Have Fun in the Community Pool: A Guide for Various Ages

June 30th, 2008 by Karen, under Motherhood. 4 Comments

If you are a five-year-old boy with Shrek swim trunks that show off your baby love-handles and magnificent plumber’s crack:

1. Have your Mom apply some “sun scream” to you so you don’t get “sun born.”
2. Squirt a huge glob of sunscreen in your hand, squish it between your fingers, and make fart noises.
3. Sneak up on your big sister, wipe your hands off on her back, and tell her it’s bird poop.
4. Put on a pair of big blue goggles and wear the straps low so your ears fold over and you look like Dopey Dwarf.
5. Swim underwater like a shark stalking the group of little girls. When you get there, splash and make wild animal mating calls until they all scream and run to the other side of the pool. Start all over again.

If you are a seven-year old diva in a pink polka-dot swimsuit who just today got your bangs cut to match Hannah Montana:

1. Skip around the pool deck instead of walking. This gives you more momentum for flipping your hair about dramatically.
2. Cry inconsolably for three minutes even after your Mom explains that it is only sunscreen, not bird poop, on your back.
3. Sing constantly. Stop only if you are crying inconsolably or if you get water up your nose.
4. Determine that the lifeguard looks just like Troy from High School Musical and decide you should have a crush on him.
5. Refer to the following rules from How to Have a Crush on the Lifeguard When You are a Seven-Year-Old Diva:

A. Let out an unprovoked squeal every three minutes.
B. After squealing, say, “Omigod, Omigod, Omigod! He. Is. SOOOO. Cute.”
C. Clutch your chest and appear faint (NOTE: when you are seven, faint looks like a cross between melancholy and constipation. You might practice looking faint in the mirror before going to the pool, just so you’ll get it right).

If you are a pony-legged, nine-year-old big sister and future practitioner of recreational acquatic law:

1. Read the pool rules and note their location so that you may point at them emphatically when your little sister skips rather than walks on the pool deck.
2. Fix your wedgie by pulling your suit back over your left cheek.
3. Demonstrate the strokes you learned in swim lessons to the younger children. Counsel them on their form.
4. Fix your wedgie by pulling your suit back over your right cheek.
5. Roll your eyes at your sister. Explain to her that Troy is not real and even if he were, he is definitely not breaking up with Gabriella to date a seven-year-old.
6. Go down the water slide about a hundred times. Give your Mom a thumb’s up after each turn.

IF YOU ARE THE MOTHER of, say, a five-year-old shark-boy, keep the beach bag packed for a quick exit. Your shark-boy might be lured by the sight of the oversized bottom half of a bright floral-print suit accompanied by cellulite the likes of which few have ever seen. He might be overwhelmed by the urge to touch it, then poke it. Again (because the dear woman is sweet and doesn’t scold him). And you will probably be mortified, because even as you are reeling him ashore, he will be saying, “Mom, what is that stuff on her butt?” And you won’t be able to get out of there fast enough.

OSI: Doorway

June 28th, 2008 by Karen, under Cinquain, Poems. 13 Comments

Thresholds–
those deep breaths of
expectancy I’ll step
through, stumble over when I hear
you knock.

–Karen Crone 2008 for OSI: Doorway

To Jeanette’s Twin Girls

June 23rd, 2008 by Karen, under Memoir, Nursing. 1 Comment

Dear Girls,

When something like this happens, something this sorrowful, the grief rips the room apart, shooting out from the painful center. We, all of us who stood beside you, have this shrapnel in our hearts.

I will never forget the sight of your little blond heads on the pillow beside your mother’s. Your small hands caressing her face. The puppy cries you made when your Daddy told you she was about to go to heaven, she was going to die. You are only five years old. What does death mean to you? The loss is beyond your comprehension, which is a blessing perhaps. A stay from the devastation.

I watched you leave, holding your father’s hands, stepping forward from this day into another one. You will take her with you.

I sit and wait for the meaning to come, unable to express myself in the face of this mystery.

And I listen to Eva Cassidy while I am waiting on this. She journeyed through cancer, too. Few knew of her while she was here on this earth, but now we hear her on the radio, singing like such an angel. She is gone, but here. Like your Mom.

Totally Optional Prompts: Summer

June 23rd, 2008 by Karen, under Free Verse, Poems. 10 Comments

SUMMER LOVE?
or
ROMANCING THE POTATO SALAD

Last year’s picnic, she came late
and left early. But she made
pink potato salad and said
the special ingredient was love
(tasted like French dressing to me).
Her husband boiled the potatoes
and cut the onion, but she mixed
in the love, she said. So there.

This year, she’s a no-show, so
I tried stirring in fat-free Catalina.
It tasted the same, but more zesty.
You know what that means…
Someone at Kraft Foods has it bad for me.

–Karen Crone for TOP: Summer

Haiku Cento

June 21st, 2008 by Karen, under Cento, Haiku, Poems. 14 Comments

MY FATHER YELLS, WHATCHA GONNA DO WITH YOUR LIFE?

I’m keepin’ my baby.
How wonderful life is, now
I walk the line.

Karen Crone, 2008 for OSI: Melody

Thanks for the soundtrack:

And thanks to One Single Impression for the prompt. I was motivated to honor OSI by doing haiku for this one. And since last time I indulged in free verse, I thought I’d throw in one more poetic form for the challenge. It was the perfect prompt for cento–I was able to pluck and play with the lyrics of so many songs I love.

Music weaves in to the moments of our lives. It ties on to a memory. Hearing a past favorite–or not-so-favorite, too–can tug on those old places within us. As I was searching for the right words for this poem, I escaped to my MP3s and remembered how I’d danced around in an over-sized sweatshirt and stir-up pants to Cindy Lauper, proud to be a girl. And I believed, for a time, that I was born to be a choreographer (you should have seen my routine for Madonna’s Open Your Heart to Me. LOL). I remembered the first time I fell in love. And when love changed from a notion in my head to the real work and substance of my life.

It has been nearly ten years since I learned I would become a mother. I never knew I was an acrobat. I walked the tight rope. It can be scary up here, but each step has a beat and the beats make a rhythm and it sounds like joy. Or, well, at least a lot of fun. Sounds a lot like Stevie Wonder’s For Once in My Life. Go put it on–you’ll know what I mean.

Don’t forget to dance. Go on, shake it!

Karen

P.S. Those booties are FOR REAL. You can buy those for your favorite baby at Krafty Lady Kreations on Etsy.

Time of Death 0013

June 18th, 2008 by Karen, under Free Verse, Nursing, Poems. 4 Comments

One Single Impression Prompt:
Transience or Permanence

This week’s writing prompt from One Single Impression was “Transience or Permanence.” What sort of melancholy poet would I be without acknowledging the permanence of death? Wish I had a brighter muse this week, but my work was taking me to these places. Here’s what I got:

TIME OF DEATH 0013

I say, “Bicarb going in.”
Then, “Three minutes since third Epi.”
Then, “Five minutes since last Atropine.”

It all sounds like a prayer.
Like Hail, Mary!
Like now and at the hour of our death. Amen.

Karen Crone, 2008

Reads

June 12th, 2008 by Karen, under Books, Uncategorized. No Comments

Did you think I was neglecting my blog? Never! I was just building a few pages on books I’m reading. Does this seem obligatory? To have a page listing books I am reading, books that I love? I apologize–can’t help myself. There must be a page about books I am reading and what I am learning/discovering from them.

To check it out, go to Reads

Um-structions

June 8th, 2008 by Karen, under God, spirituality. 1 Comment

I chose this pic to make my five-year-old smile, since he’s the one who got me thinking…

Spence, my son, is a philosopher. He is always asking existential questions. Where are we going? Are we there yet? And of course, WHY?

One thing he rarely asks me anymore is how. There are a couple of reasons for this. First, I suppose he is starting to figure how ninety percent of the time, I don’t know. And then second, he has discovered a better source: “um-structions.”

Whenever he gets a new game or toy, Spence will ask, “Where are the um-structions?”

Amen! I love that question. Although, I have to tell you it gets a little tedious when, after I spend an entire hour finagling his latest gadget out of its custom packaging, I must read the instructions through to him a time or two and explain that we are not going to read the other side because we don’t speak French. I know he’s worried they are giving the French some tip they don’t give to us English-speakers. I have considered that as well, but what can you do…

Amen, I was saying. I want instructions (um-structions). I want a how-to. Starting with getting out of bed and stretching. And ending with me dying at ninety, looking like forty, having raised three delightful children, nutured a successful marriage, travelled the world, and unravelled the mysteries of life, all while avoiding serious illness and pleasing the sensiblities of everyone around me.

The important stuff never comes with instructions. I wonder, was God writing a Life for Dummies book but then couldn’t find a publisher? No. Of course He wasn’t. He wouldn’t torture us by further propagating our illusion of control with a step-by-step manual for wordly success. Because we’d be a mess anyway. That’s part of the deal here, the hot sticky mess. And how could we ever begin to explain ourselves if there were a divinely inscribed Life for Dummies book?

I threw this theory by a friend of mine and she said, somewhat haughtily, “But He did write that book. It’s called THE BIBLE. And we will have to explain ourselves.”

Well excu-oooose me. Sometimes she makes me scared to be a fellow Christian. If the Bible is in the “Life, for Dummies” category, then I need something a tad more elementary, like “Life, for Frontal Lobotomies.“

Don’t tell her, but I had one more thought: The Bible’s room for interpretation (or Torah, Koran, whatever your persuasion), your conscience, the Suggestion in nature. It’s God working in ambiguity. That has to be deliberate. Means we can all connect some way, that none of us falls outside of the lines. There is no black or white. With ambiguity, there are no definitive exclusions. That God! He’s genius!

But, when you are looking for some simple um-structions, He is completely exhasperating. Even if you speak French, I suppose.

Where is Home?

June 3rd, 2008 by Karen, under Free Verse, Poems. 4 Comments

HOME
It’s when you are five and it’s bedtime and you ask
Daddy what if I get lost or stolen by a monster-man
and Dad pulls the blankets to your chin and says
know this: if you are ever lost I will search for you
and I will never stop if it takes my whole life
I won’t ever give up. And it is simple for you
to believe because he is so big and you are small
a piece of him he’d come for like Helen of Troy.

Above is my entry for Beth Patterson’s exercise/contest Where’s Home? hosted by The Virtual Teahouse. I have enjoyed reading the thoughts on “home” from some of my favorite bloggers like Patti Digh and Dave Pollard. What are your thoughts on what home is and how we find a place of belonging in this age of disconnection? Enter!!!

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