DURESS ITSELF MAY BE A PRAYER

My cousin Dan drives around a lot, takes pleasure drives across the country and such. As fresh accompaniment, I burnt a few discs for him for the road . One of them was part of a Time-Life Folk Years compilation that was only so-so, but good for nostalgia. In the no good deed goes unpunished, I cannot get Sonny and Cher Baby, Don't Go out of my head (don't ask what this was doing on a folk compilation; it's all about the moolah). It must be the Wrecking Crew that grabs me. (Checked it out and it was.) Here's Hot Tuna doing Come Back, Baby as an ear palate cleanser. Play it loud.

I was musing to a friend the other day about how her husband, dear as he might be, has a low ceiling. What I meant by that was he has a tendency to get depressed and all focussed down and misses opportunities for both work and pleasure. And then I realized how aptly that shoe fits on my emotional foot.

Right now, however, I am sitting at the dining room table where I can see the sun shining on a through the peach roses, which are about 15 minutes from the blowsy and dropping stage. They look pretty from here. And, the azaleas are coming along great guns, although I have YET to feed them.

I am giving in to temptation and brewing a third cup of espresso. Janet and I are going through coffee at a good clip these days. She can drink a cup in the late afternoon or evening and still sleep like a rock. I think coughing is the only thing that keeps her away. If only I were so inclined to good sleep.

Emmylou is taking advantage of my sitting at the dining room table and going in for the face pets. She usually knocks open the bathroom door to take advantage of me when I am incommunicado.

At any rate, I will bet the garden will be beautiful by the time the bank takes it over after my mom dies. I hope they don't tear out all the plants, the bougainvillea, the wisteria, the carolina jasmine, the arabian jasmine, the azaleas, and lilac vine I am tenderly nurturing. The saw grass weeds and the nasturtiums are having a strong response to all of the spring rain, (although it technically isn't spring until tomorrow) by getting huge. Perhaps it will make weeding some of that grass easier as it will be simpler to tell it apart from the poppies and the cosmos.

Later that same day.

I am so angry with Janet that I feel sick. Our relationship utterly exhausts me. She steamrolls over my "buttons" so often. We do not have a happy, comfortable, or even pleasant relationship most of the time. She is reasonably compliant about taking her medication (finally) and not letting out the cats (some big relief there) so I guess physiologically she can still learn. But she is not motivated to any sort of kindness or care toward me. There is no partnership or help whatsoever.

The worst point, the thing that makes me unconscionably angry is when she ignores me. That sends me straight back to my childhood where she didn't help me even when it was really her job. She just abandoned me to my own devices. Even when I begged her to fill out my university financial aid forms, to get my father to do so, she shrugged and said she didn't get around to it. Because sitting around with the cats and floating in Janet universe was more important. Don't get me started about my father who wouldn't even drive me up to start college because he didn't want me to go. And you wonder why most of us Syberg didn't want children?

I know a lot of you like my mother. Let me tell you that she is a smart-alecky, self-absorbed, helpless, dependent bitch. She is extremely passive aggressive. She has never been a thoughtful, generous person, at least not to her family.

This is not to say she has never been kind or generous. But the times she has been are moments I can practically count out on my fingers.

I just feel sick and defeated. I know when she dies I will flagellate myself nearly to suicide, but it is so hard to deal with her, be with her. Although I am essentially the hired help, the emotional baggage makes it so much worse. I don't have any perspective.

I started this day in a good and positive mood. I enjoyed my garden and the cats, I did some work. I had some ideas I wanted to write to you about. Now I just want to cry and vomit. I am nearly shaking with exhaustion, emotional exhaustion. It is a wonder that I didn't emotionally eat my way through a bag of chips, nor succumb to the temptations of the liquor aisle at Trader Joe's.

I will just sink into the oblivion that a book or tv can provide.

Later that same night.

There have been times when Janet and I were close. I called her to share things with, to unwind, to laugh with. Maybe some of my anger (but not damn much) comes from knowing she is soon to die. It's within the realm of possibility that I am pushing her away. I find it very challenging to be close to her as I don't trust her not to hurt me. She probably feels the same way.

I just happened to open to this page.

SPRING

Winter, like a set opinion
is routed. What gets it out?
The imposition of some external season
or some internal doubt?
I see yellow miscalculations spread
across bleak hills of what I said
I'd always think: a stippling of whit
upon the grey; a pink the shade.
of what I said I'd never say.


I MARVELLED AT HOW
GENERALLY I WAS AIDED
— The Autobiography of Charles Darwin


I marvel at how generally
I am aided, how frequently
the availability of help
is demonstrated. I've had
unbridgeable distances collapse
and opposite objects coalesce
enough to think duress itself
may be a prayer. Perhaps not chance,
but need, selects; and desperation
works upon giraffes until their necks
can reach the necessary branch.
If so, help alters; makes seven vertebrae
go farther in living generations;
help coming to us, not from the fathers,
not to the children

— Kay Ryan, The Best of It: New and Selected Poems, New York, Grove Press, 2010