seethingblue's Diaryland Diary ----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- i have no meaning to her empty like boxes: folded and erect, filled and labeled by items like blowdryers with snaky cords coiling over the edge, and fingerpaints with lids caked dry, permanently locked. my mother is a specimen to be watched. she has always commanded attention by the tone of words she does not say, by sighs she willingly emits to sizzle in the open room, she drives poorly with her glasses oversized, a tiny owl clutching the wheel and lurching from side to side cursing in her native language. she is busy while she rests. never sitting for long but tucking her feet beneath her, clucking internally at the mental checklists that fill her brain, an endless to-do list to fix and buy and bake and clean. in the box beneath her bed she folds tiny moonstones in an embroidered handkerchief. there are tapes of ministers with their voices swept up in exultation, self-righteous, much like her. and there are stained photographs of people with similar faces: broad noses, defiant chins, mouths forever fixed and set in firm lines. in my box, i carry floral crowns quickly assembled by nimble fingers though stout and unsightly, soft and flexible pine needles embracing one another in a criss-crossed design, embedded with liquid pink petals. and i carry the poems of friends stained by ink and wrinkled and worn by pairs of hands that clasped pencils and pens and scribbled furiously on cement tables behind math buildings after school and clutched phones to hear stories of pain resulting from parents, a permanent fixation in our lives. and smoothed away troubles like eyelashes, to bring wishes near and not bad luck. i wish i could peer inside my mother's box to see the connection between us. but boxes have only been containers to carry things away, to move them, to unpack and place properly in order they have no meaning to her. 11:18 - 16 September, 2002 ----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- |
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