Category: childhood

My Child Self (still there, inside, waiting)

On By MiCoIn changes, childhood, courage, darkness, family, fear, growing, heartbreak, hope, love, love poetry, pain, past times, poetry, sadness, sweetnessLeave a comment

 

Sad little girl,

Come, sit with me.

Let me hold you, dry your tears,

Kiss your sweet little face.

I know you are hurt, I understand, I see her,

I see how she is, how she treats you.

Come and sit close, you can trust me,

I will protect you; there is no hurting here.

I know you are too little to understand, and

Too innocent to see the shame and fear she holds inside.

All you know is the pain of her betrayal.

I know and see how hard you try to please her, yet still she is hateful and mean.

I hear her tell you daily that you are not good enough, are funny looking and how she wishes she had never given birth to you.

I see and feel your pain and frustration, and

It breaks my heart to watch this happen to us.

I have learned and grown while you have waited and now the time has come

For me to come back in time to you, to a time when we were one.

Look for me and don’t be afraid, come close and I will read you a story,

I know she never did.

I will hold you like my baby and sing your sorrows to sleep,

She didn’t know how.

I will show you that you are better than good enough, and

I will prove to you that there is nothing wrong with you, in spite of what she said.

You will never be alone again,

The wait is over.

Trust me my child-self,

I have enough love for both of us, I pinky-promise.

 

 

After re-reading this post it has finally dawned on me why my anger and hurt at being neglected is still so strong… that was my punishment as a child for not being what my mother wanted me to be…. first she would yell at me and then she would ignore me, not speak to me for days at a time, and when she finally did, it was only to affirm how worthless I was… my husband treated me the same way, and so did other men in my life… unbelievable… so wrong and so sad for that little girl who still lives in my heart.

The Stones Will Remember

On By MiCoIn changes, childhood, courage, dreams, earth, faith, growing, hope, Joy, light, love, Man, nature, past times, peace, poetry, seasons, sweetness, Uncategorized, Woman, Writing13 Comments

Evening shadows shift

Through broken windows.

 

Chimney bricks slide down the roof

Puddleing under the lilac bush.

 

Weeds spread into the driveway

Reclaiming it for themselves.

 

When was this house built?

Was it ever new?

 

The yard and doorframes bear witness

To the families who grew here.

 

Long forgotten toys and broken swings

Hide beneath the matted field grass.

 

A broken clothesline flaps in the gray autumn breeze and

Sprung clothespins mold and rot into the ground beneath the broken posts.

 

Feral cats are now the only life that calls this old farm home,

And birdsong still fills the rafters of the barn.

 

The barn that once held livestock

Sits shifted on its foundation,

 

Listing and leaning to the south,

Away from winter’s fierce winds.

 

The stately oak gracing the front yard is rotten and broken,

Its fingers through the house roof.

 

Where did they go, the people

Who called this place home?

 

When the last one left,

Why didn’t they clean out the house?

 

Why not take the toys?

Close the windows? Lock the doors?

 

Did they not know they were

Never coming back?

 

The windmill out back has long ago

Crashed into the apple orchard,

 

Breaking in to pieces as it fell

and crushing the trees it had stood watch over all these years.

 

But in man’s absence

The apple trees continue to produce.

 

The lilac bushes flower every spring in spite of

Not being “cared for” in over 40 years.

 

The forest is slowing creeping back in to fill the void

Left when the field was abandoned.

 

All that remains of the people who once called this spot of land home

Is the family graveyard,

 

Where stones are carved with love and care,

Preserving for all time the names and dates of those whose lives began and ended here.

 

But the lilacs don’t care about being preserved,

The Oak is beyond pride and the buildings are slowly returning to the soil,

 

Just like the bodies beneath the stones.

Another 40 years and the stones will be all that remains.

 

They will be all that is left to tell the story

Of a time gone by.

 

The story of a house built to last a lifetime, a barn crafted with pride,

The story of generations of a family who lived, worked and died on this land.

 

A story only the stones will remember.

Isabelle

On By MiCoIn childhood, growing, light, love, poetry3 Comments

 

Morning warmth spreads through the house with the sunlight and

Silly baby squeaks and raspberry tongue sounds slide down the hall.

I smell her sweetness at the nursery door,

Baby powder, formula, clean diapers folded neatly in a basket and scented baby wipes.

I peak through the crack in the door to catch her unaware

In the act of just being a baby, so honest and true.

A well-worn bear hangs by one arm over the side of the crib,

And Isabelle’s tiny hands clutch the top rails.

A toothless grin and sparkling eyes

Greet me and the morning with unconditional love.

She knows no conditions.

A baby’s love is free in its simplicity and truth,

The way God made love to be.

We could learn a lot from babies

Nostalgia

On By MiCoIn changes, childhood, courage, faith, family, hope, light, love, past times, poetry6 Comments

Nostalgia, longing,

Is that what they call that slow, sad ache in my chest?

 

I get it when I think of my distant past,

My childhood, those days of security and family.

 

Parents who took care of everything, a father who was

Always there and the most honest man I have ever known.

 

The nostalgic pain is refreshed when I go on line and look at

Pictures of the town I grew up in and the memories they bring.

 

Today I am sitting in my writing desk listening to an infomercial on the tv in the other room.

It is an ad for recordings of love songs of the last 50 years, the nostalgic ache is as great as the music is beautiful.

 

A Time/Life collection of love songs from the past a few of which are:  “At Last” by Etta James, “Stardust” by Nat King Cole, “Chances Are” by Jonny Mathis, and one of my very favorites “What a Beautiful World” by Louis Armstrong.  Where have all the good love songs gone?

Are they gone because love isn’t the same today as it was then?  Is it because sex means nothing more than a bodily function to most people? Are people really that difference now than they were in the recent past, or do they just not know any better?

Have we changed so much that love and sex are not personal or important anymore?  I hope not although that is the way it seems more and more.

But I refuse to believe it even though I have loved and surrendered myself, all of me in truth to three men in my life and have been used and left behind by each of them.

Did I expect too much, expect them to be more than they are capable of? And was the past really so much better or have I painted it with unrealistic and romanticized memories based on songs?  I don’t know, maybe.

But I remember my dad dancing with my mom in the living room, and I remember him telling me that there was no greater job to be done in this world than the one my mother did taking care of us and our home.

He lived and treated us and everyone in his life with respect and love.  My ideas on how things should be are greatly influenced by him, and for that I am thankful.

Maybe it is because of him that my disappointments of the past and the most recent one have so deeply affected me, my dad is a hard act to follow.

But on the other hand it is because of the things he taught me that I will try to keep my heart open in the hope that maybe somewhere out there is a man who remembers the old love songs and what they really meant.
A man who is open to love and trust, understanding and compassion.  I’m sure he exists; I just don’t know where to find him.

 

September Morning (Sarah’s Birthday)

On By MiCoIn childhood, faith, family, hope, love, poetry4 Comments

In morning’s stillness, the owl sings to me of days gone by.

Soft darkness surrounds my heart and brings me back in time.

Back to a small building, a small town,

36 years in the past to an empty waiting room and dimly lit corridors.

To a quiet hospital’s artificial twilight while the world sleeps on,

Unaware of the new life signaling its time to begin.

It was just us, waiting together, physically connected as one

But for only a few hours more.

Your birth was the beginning of our separate journeys but as

A physical separation only, we remained together in heart and mind.

In that early September morning mist, as a tiny girl, you took your place beside me,

And changed my life with your smile.

You left the temporary shelter of my body,

And joined the permanent shelter of my heart.

Your presence in this world begin on that beautiful morning but

Your soul was already here, waiting for you to come back.

Right from the beginning your wisdom and light shown through your tiny eyes.

Your smile contagious, your grace and love profound.

You are an eternal soul born to bring a spark of goodness and light back to this world,

Your simple presence making the world and my life a better place.

You are now a woman, holding the little hand of the next embodiment of profound sprit and wisdom.

Your light is strong in your daughter and so the cycle continues.

From mother to daughter, sister to sister,

Woman to woman.

Together we are strong, loving, grace filled and eternal and build on each other’s strengths.

The time has come for us to take our rightful place in this universe.

Our life-force will change the world and the heavens and bring them back into balance.

And as it was in the beginning, the hands that rock the cradle will hold the hearts of the world and all will be at peace once more.

The change has begun.

September 3, 2015

MC

When the Clouds are Loud

On By MiCoIn childhood, nature, poetry6 Comments

Molly says, “The clouds are loud”

And she is so afraid!

Are you afraid when the clouds are loud?

And the lightening flickers across the sky and lights up the night?

And when the flashes come, do you see

Scary things in the shadows?

Are you afraid when the clouds are loud and

The wind howls and shakes the house and the rain falls in sheets and makes a pond of the field?

Are you afraid when the clouds are loud and the trees shake

And bend in fear

And the flowers cower and crows call and

The garden rolls up her skirt and hides behind the barn?

Are you afraid when the clouds are loud and the sky turns dark and

Thunder shakes the ground, rattles the windows and

The windmill blades spin in terror and

Birds hide in the cellar window wells?

And when the clouds return to silence and the world is washed fresh, does your fear wash away with the rain water?

Molly’s does.