Outside, the wind shakes the orange trees’ branches and they shimmy uncomfortably like busty old women. And before I hear the pinking on the roof, I see the grey spots appear on the cement patio. “It’s raining!” Aaron announces to the house as he heads for the backdoor and slides it open. I pick up Evan from his Bumbo and sit him in my arms, facing out.
The monsoon weighs down the Arizona heat, so when Aaron opens the door, the air swims powerfully over my face and through my nose. It wraps itself intimately around me, folding warm blankets fresh from the dryer but still damp from the wash around my index fingers, ears, calves, knee caps, neck, hair roots. I step barefoot onto the warm concrete and walk just far enough to get dusted with the starter rain drops. Then I inhale the dirty rain. I have loved the smell of rain wherever I have lived, but in Arizona, my home town, it smells like baptism. The dust, dirt, and oil washes the streets, bubbles in the gutters, and floods dry, grassy retention basins.
Evan feels the raindrops tap his arms, feet, and face and blinks into the sky, making sense of the heavens. With a furrowed brow, he reaches one hand out and tries to capture a drop in his squishy fist.
I blink the rain from my eyelashes and look out, making sense of the earth. Sunshine in Arizona bleaches my perspective. But overcast days unveil the desert’s colors: green leaves, magenta bricks, white trunks, orange, brown, red, blue, silver, grey, rust, yellow. The swimming pool reflects what it sees like a pair of sunglasses and turns deep grey as the water rustles and plops, churned by wind and raindrops.
Tasks wait inside—dishes, cooking, playing. But here, mother and son get polka-dotted by the rain. While I drink in smells, colors, and sounds, Evan concentrates on the sky and plays catch with angels pitching him raindrops. (Another piece I wrote for the ANWA Founder and Friends blog.)
by Andilyn Jenkins (I originally wrote this piece for the ANWA Founder and Friends blog who invited me into their ranks. Check them out.)
Five foot and three inches at 118 pounds, I sat on the laminate wood floor in my black leotard and mustard yellow Sofie shorts holding my slippered feet and leaning forward in the butterfly stretch. My hairline and back were misty from a hard workout as we sat in a small half circle cooling down and stretching before heading home.
I don’t remember how the conversations began, but they were always thought-provoking and nourishing. Several years later, I have to Google “ballet terms” to recall the pirouettes, piques, and rond de jambs, but I always remember listening to my dance teacher Julie open my eyes to the limitless possibilities of the eternities.
Julie wanted us to understand why she worked us—why she pushed us further when our muscles trembled and our breathing huffed, the precision required seemingly beyond our physical capabilities. She wanted us to understand the beauty of dance that was linked to our souls.
“Our bodies,” she encouraged, “are imperfect. We are fallen. But when you and I are resurrected, our skill with our bodies will be limitless because we trained them in their fallen state.” She visualized that we would feel our ankle weights drop off as we leap with the grace of queens.
Julie chases dance because her spirit hungers to reconnect in mortal measure what she knew and will know in eternity—a link we could all feel for dance but one that I suspect is magnified for her because she has cultivated it. Because when you drill a fouetté jeté thirty-two times only to complete it perfectly once, you feel for a moment what it is like to be perfect. But the beauty of the connection she has for dance is that we can all feel it for something. We are all created eternally, which means we lived before the world was and we will live again after death. And in the infinite befores and afters, we did not and will not sit endlessly on feather pillows gazing listlessly into infinity. Surely, we danced, sang, wrote, acted, taught, painted, and built.
Pondering Julie’s lesson, I realize that what is true for her in dance is true for me in the written word. I mine my soul for nuggets of truth that I must craft into language. And in the crafting, I am foiled by my mortal education and a fallen language. I pause when the stuff of my spirit knows the right words to unroll the truths stuck in my core, and yet, the frustrating state of this fallen place hold me back from reading the word etched on the tip of my spiritual tongue, and I feel a phantom itch on that part of my brain encasing the memories I no longer have. So in a yearning to articulate those truths, I dig to the bottom of my pit and crudely describe the dirt under my fingernails because the dirt is all I have left to taste from the eternities.
So I must breathe every fallen, imperfect word because it is all I have. And much like a plastic bottle of Coke, only if I wrestle my mortal brain vigorously enough, will my words reach the heavens when I remove the cap. Until then, my hungry soul will grumble for the words it knows and cannot utter.
Julie dances. I write. Where is your sliver of eternity? Feed your soul and prepare to lose your ankle weights.
“Nevertheless, so great and marvelous were the words which he prayed that they cannot be written, neither can they be uttered by man” (3 Nephi 19:34).
To all the mommies who do their job with no vacations or sick days. If you didn’t like this poem, don’t share it. That would be dumb. If you did like it, or—better yet—if it rang true, I invite you to share it. It would certainly make my Mother's Day.
I met Daddy and his smile made my knees buckle,
so we buckled down,
and now we tell you to buckle up.
And the swish-clicks of the car seat and booster seat and seat belts
tell me that we’re hittin’ the road for a journey that I am evidently on
but unprepared for.
Unprepared to lose the backs of my diamond stud earrings
because they slipped through your fleshy, fumbly fingers
when you “helped” me accessorize.
Unprepared that I would comb through carpet fibers looking for those escape artists
not because I cared whether or not my earrings were in-tact,
but because my gut said, “Kneel. Comb,” when I saw your apologetic eyes filling up with tears.
My gut.
My gut told me I was missing you, then filled with you, and now extends to you,
always aware and never free from the deep purple scars that reflect in the bathroom mirror
and announce, “I have a child.”
My gut churns on date nights with Daddy hoping Grandma remembered to put your pink blankie on top of your covers instead of under them
so your fingers can sift through the minky fabric until the steady waves in your sea-green eyes break in sleep.
So I wonder why I don’t fly and live the dreams that filled my gut before Daddy smiled.
But you were once a part of me, and now that you’re apart from me, you’ve taken part of me
and my gut
will never stop looking after those missing pieces.
So at night when I write and I think all I want is escape,
I realize that if I sliced off my left leg, I’d most likely want it back because how else could I dance?
So baby, remember that I yelled when you asked me to help you put on your socks,
remember that I fell asleep on the floor playing princess, using my plush steed as a pillow,
and remember that I locked the bathroom door to cry because these shoulders you rely on aren’t always strong enough to carry the weight that they bare anyway.
Don’t forget those moments. Hold onto to the truth.
Because it too easily slips through fleshy, fumbly fingers when you read too many posts and blogs and tweets.
And you’ll find yourself on your knees combing through fibers of self-doubt and insecurities when you think you’re not supposed to break.
Good mommies don’t break?
Here is the truth:
Baby, you broke me. My body, my sanity, my soul, my dreams into play-dough pieces
that you ripped and rolled and stretched and stacked
because I am yours.
And, while I fantasize flight—a daytime me-time world with blank pieces of paper and pens that work—
I stay.
Because my name is Mommy.
I fought with this poem for about five months before I thought it said what I wanted. After I had my second baby, I felt a lot like Shel Silverstein's The Giving Tree. With my resources exhausted, I started writing this poem wanting to pen motherhood in real light because I was getting tired of the memes that end, "But when I see them smile, it's all worth it." Because that didn't make it all worth it to me. And I became fascinated with the realization that moms just do it. No one teaches a mom to love her children more than herself. No one tells her that she must give over her body and dreams to children. In fact, there are those who choose alternatives. But those who stay, plug on. Why? Because we understand the work we do and choose to do it. We are mommies.
And, finally, a special thanks to Laura Crandell over at Crandell Corner: budget-friendly video for life's happy moments. (www.facebook.com/crandellcorner) It's thanks to her mad skills that my poem finally came alive.
We laugh and blow raspberries, our own secret chat.
His hands sloppily seize my chin,
locking my face and requiring that
I stay in this moment with him.
And I wonder if the adoration I see
is my baby boy mimicking me.
I was playing with my boy and the moments turned into words which turned into a Shakespearean sonnet. Thanks to my sister-in-law, Shalee Jenkins, for the stunning photos of my baby boy. Find me later this week when I post some slam poetry about being a mother. With the help of the very talented Laura Crandell, we're recording tomorrow. Wish us luck! You won't want to miss it.
I
need three quarts of bubble-gum flavored optimism
and
a cup of realism to balance out the side-effects.
Eh
. . . forget the realism.
I‘ll
substitute a teaspoon of pessimism—I’ve got plenty of that on-hand.
Oh,
just one more thing:
When
you find the aisle
with
heartbreak
and
swing dancing lessons
please
load up on baby kisses.
They’re
seasonal, you know.
And
unlike most things,
they
won’t be around forever.
Thanks to my husband for the photography-skill. Stay tuned later this week for my Evan sonnet. And this Mother's Day, I will be posting a video of my slam (spoken-word) poem on motherhood that I guarantee you won't want to miss.
If you like what you're reading, please comment, share, and/or follow my blog. Your support keeps me motivated to write more.
Growing up, I tried to remain physically active: horseback
riding, dance lessons, aerobics classes, jogging with friends, wakeboarding,
longboarding, but nothing held my attention for more than a few months at most,
usually a few weeks. I was never overweight, but I knew I wasn’t health—I
wasn’t fit. I knew how alive I felt after exercising. But when my life got
busy, exercising fell to the back-burner, again and again.
Two things changed my outlook on exercising. One came with
my baby girl: unwanted weight and baby blues. My self-esteem plummeted, and I
hated it—I hated me. I felt sluggish, useless, and it was winter in Idaho, so I
constantly felt trapped and antsy. I wanted to be more for my daughter, an
example of high self-esteem and happiness. But that goal was far from what I
had become.
But the second thing, along with encouragement from my
husband, came through school: I took a Women’s Health class—a class that I
recommend every woman of every major take. In that class I learned
that while becoming physically fit has its advantages for your physique, the
most important benefits are for your physical and emotional health. Exercising couldn’t
be about turning me into a bikini-bomb-shell, because the reality is that few
people who exercise will ever feel that way about their looks. Exercising
became an opportunity for me to feel strong, successful, and pro-active. I was
no longer holding a daily pity party; instead, I took charge and dealt with my
problems. And even after exercising that first day, I felt happy again. I
hadn’t lost any weight, and I certainly felt sore in the morning, but I felt
alive again. And as I developed a regular exercise routine, three to six days a
week, the feeling stuck.
Bob Livingstone, author of The Body-Mind-Soul Solution, explains what happened to me.
Livingstone suggests that neurotransmitters are affected by exercise (88).
Endorphins are probably the neurotransmitters most of us are familiar with regarding
exercise: endorphins release during exercise and make us happy. But on the
topic of serotonin production in exercise, Livingstone quotes a study by the
British Journal of Sports Medicine, “Physical activity has the same effect as
antidepressants . . . Aerobic exercise stimulates neurotransmitters in our
brain to produce serotonin which makes us feel good. And exercise, unlike
antidepressants, has no negative side-effects” (90). Imagine: a solution to
mild depression that doesn’t require the cost—monetarily and emotionally—that
exists in prescription solutions. Of course exercise is not a fix-all; there
are some who will still need to pair depression medication with regular
exercise, but exercise is the healing power—the natural key God designed in our
bodies to deal with depression, stress, anxiety, and sluggishness.
It would be six more months of off and on exercise before I
found an activity I loved enough to stick to. ZUMBA fitness was my activity,
something I enjoyed so much that after a year attending classes, I went on to
license. Since moving to Arizona and having a second baby, I had to cancel my
license, but it hasn’t changed my dedication. I discovered myself through exercise.
And I became whole. I became a happier, more confident person, a better wife,
and certainly a better mother.
Most people know that exercise is good for our bodies. The
benefits are endless: exercise sharpens your mind, strengthens your muscles,
enables you to deal with stress, improves your physique, enhances your self-esteem,
reduces your appetite, clears your arteries, reduces cholesterol, strengthens
your heart, reduces high blood pressure, reduces your risk for colon cancer
(87) and Alzheimer’s (89).
Do I have you yet?
What if I told you that exercise generates new brain cells,
and studies show those who exercised “displayed improved decision-making
abilities and improved cognitive performance” (97)? What about the study where “patients
with epilepsy felt better . . . [and] improved their seizure control with
regular exercise” (92)? Furthermore, exercise “enables you to stay physically
strong as you age,” reducing “muscle loss, joint stiffness, ligament failure,
and injury propensity” (96). Aka, exercising today staves off the old-fogies’ bed
pans tomorrow.
But the bottom line—exercise is good for your physical and
emotional health.
Find something active you love and become addicted. Your
body and mind now and in the future will thank you. Posted
on the chalkboard at my old ZUMBA fitness dance studio Fuzion in Sugar City,
Idaho was this quotation: “Exercise because you love your body, not because
you hate it.” Exercise because you want to do something good for
your body—something good for you, not because you want to fit into a pair of
jeans. I guarantee if your motivation is the latter, you’ll likely be disappointed
and quit. If your motivation is the former, you’ll be successful and healthy. So
start today and love yourself tomorrow.
Works Cited
Livingstone, Bob.
The Body-Mind-Soul Solution: Healing
Emotional Pain through Exercise. New York: Pegasus Books, 2007. Print.
So
I stare at the two-by-fours, blue by reflection, but less brilliant.
As
Lot’s Wife, I long to see the glow, the glamour, the awe-full radiance.
But
I close my eyes, not a grain of salt sighted.
Fiery
sparks sky-rocket and fall lamely—
the
misted stage precaution pointless.
But
still I stand, and euthanize the flickers.
I
guess I do what I’m told.
I wrote this poem in my junior year in college and it won me second place under poetry in our Pre-Professional Writing Conference. Granted, I'm pretty certain my poetry professor was the only judge. So feel free to take that hoopla with a grain of salt. The handy-woman in the picture is me as a beginning technical theater student. Unfortunately, I'm not welding in this picture—I'm grinding. But with the sparks, the gear, and the time period, I thought the picture deserved to be here. Working with the welders during this depicted semester was, obviously, the inspiration for my salty, award-winning poem.
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