Author: Suzannah Kolbeck

Sunday Poem: To The “Bad” Mothers by Aaminah Shakur

Left to right: a dog I don’t remember, my mom, me, and my older brother sitting on the stone wall outside the house I grew up in, circa 1972 or 1973.

Let’s face it: Mother’s Day can be problematic. It posits an idyllic relationship where none (or a difficult one) might exist. It pits women against each other in subtle ways (childless? GASP. You must be selfish. Same goes for those women who only have one child. Women with many children are consuming too many resources. Breastfeeding? If you don’t you’re a failure. Disposable diapers are for wasteful mothers who don’t care about the environment. If you don’t make your own baby food you obviously don’t care. Go back to work. Stay home. Do both. Miscarriage? When will you try again? Don’t wait. Too late. And so on).

Here is to everything that is difficult, sacred, horrible, joyous, and beautiful about mothers. Here’s to lifting mothers up; here’s to letting women choose to not be mothers. Here’s to making peace with our mothers and their mothering; here’s to finding people who nurture us every day, mothers or no.

Finally, here’s to the bad mothers. Now, read that like Samuel L. Jackson said it. That’s what I mean.

To the “Bad” Mothers

To the “bad” mothers
Mothers who are told plenty often
all the ways they ruined
everyone’s lives
To the mamas
who kept their kids
worked double shifts
set boundaries
couldn’t buy name brands
didn’t get an X-box
to be told they are bitches
To the moms who had
their kids taken from them
maybe it was the best thing
maybe it was a racist system
set up against them
maybe they were taken away
by drugs or prison
but they tried, they really tried
and every day they think
of what they lost
and hope their child is
better off
To the mothers who gave up
sent their kids away
at birth or after they tried
their very best
either way worried they
would fuck their kids up
more than abandoning them would
who believed someone better
would pick up the pieces
and give everything they
could not
To the “evil” stepmothers
and adoptive mothers
and foster mothers
who will never be enough
because they aren’t
“real”
and can’t explain why the real ones
can’t be there instead
To all the bad mothers out there
who ruin lives
by trying to love
the only way they know how
who save lives without credit
by loving what others
couldn’t be bothered to try
who are just trying to live
themselves
who never get a Mother’s Day card
Today is your day too
every day you are still
a mother
and there are no
perfect mothers

The reflection. The mirror.

I keep coming back to the idea of being at home in the muddy water, this notion of being ok with uncertainty. Understanding that the most beautiful things come from the murk (people. lotus flowers. Sea monkeys.).

Today, though, I am struggling with the murky depths of my own self. That dark place that is hardest to peer into. The place that is fear-filled and hidden.

I have nothing to offer today. I am trying.

Thursday Links to Love: May 7, 2020

This was remarkably meditative, and I love it so much. #paperprawn

Well, so here we are in May. How are you?

Depending on where you live, you have been practicing social distancing for almost two months now. It’s unnerving to think of how we will interact with each other when this is sorted. I have a hard time imagining what that first dinner out will be like when the server comes over with gloves and a mask to take the order.

Ah, well. Baby steps.

Below are this week’s links. Take what you need, share this post if you are so inclined, and leave everything else.

Speaking of nothing, check out this trippy five-minute film that imagines what earth would look like as it’s swallowed into a black hole. This quote from the narration by Alan Watts seems particularly important: “Someday this will pass and there will be nothing left… That’s not something to fear because we come from nothing…and from nothing comes something new.”

Looking for something to fill the black hole of your days, those endless stretches of afternoon when you have done allofthethings but still have many hours until you can legit sit in bed with your laptop propped open, watching movies? Make your own paper prawn, then share it online (#paperprawn). I dare you.

The New Yorker (watch out for the stupid paywall) just published an excellent interview with Esther Perel, a Belgian therapist who specializes in intimacy and relationships. If you are new to her work, I also suggest this excellent TEDTalk on the secret to desire in long-term relationships and the book it relates to, Mating in Captivity: Reconciling the Erotic and the Domestic (shop local – no more Amazon links here).

Seems like everyone has moved from bread to cookies these days, so here’s a recipe from just last year for Daim cookies. They use pantry ingredients  – toffee deliciousness, with or without chocolate. Or you could try these peanut butter sandwich cookies that taste just like Nutter Butters. I made them gluten-free, of course, and I swear to god they are one of the best things I have eaten all year.

Finally, six minutes that remind me of a time when we could, in fact, have nice things. This never fails to make me a little misty-eyed, in the good way that acknowledges the beauty that humans are capable of.

That’s it. What’s up with you this week? Have you made plans to honor thy mother this weekend?

 

Sunday Poem: A Plagued Journey by Maya Angelou

From Saturday’s morning walk before mouth-breathing runners without masks forced me indoors.

The only ignorance that is bad, I maintain, is that which is willful.

I admit I am ignorant of this poem and only just recently discovered it. I would like to say I am better acquainted with Angelou than I am, but in truth, it seems my education could be described as “white people’s high notes.”

I’d like to remedy that. This one seems fitting for our current time/space.

A Plagued Journey 

There is no warning rattle at the door
nor heavy feet to stomp the foyer boards.
Safe in the dark prison, I know that
light slides over
the fingered work of a toothless
woman in Pakistan.
Happy prints of
an invisible time are illumined.
My mouth agape
rejects the solid air and
lungs hold. The invader takes
direction and
seeps through the plaster walls.
It is at my chamber, entering
the keyhole, pushing
through the padding of the door.
I cannot scream. A bone
of fear clogs my throat.
It is upon me. It is
sunrise, with Hope
its arrogant rider.
My mind, formerly quiescent
in its snug encasement, is strained
to look upon their rapturous visages,
to let them enter even into me.
I am forced
outside myself to
mount the light and ride joined with Hope.

Through all the bright hours
I cling to expectation, until
darkness comes to reclaim me
as its own. Hope fades, day is gone
into its irredeemable place
and I am thrown back into the familiar
bonds of disconsolation.
Gloom crawls around
lapping lasciviously
between my toes, at my ankles,
and it sucks the strands of my
hair. It forgives my heady
fling with Hope. I am
joined again into its
greedy arms.

Maya Angelou

Sunny Days = Delicious Lunch

So much deliciousness in one place.

So it’s about 70 degrees outside as I type this from my aerie facing 35th Street in the Hampden neighborhood of Baltimore.

Just now, I can hear a firetruck and, over that, my neighbor Clarence’s loud voice, booming from his front door as he drinks from a plastic cup that has invariably been filled with something of a high proof since the clock struck 12. He greets everyone, makes small talk, just to be outside in the neighborhood.

It’s a thing, that, the conviviality of a person you don’t know, hailing you from the street as you walk past. He gets louder as the day wears on, and what is now a bit muddy to hear will ring clear as day by the time the sun sets over the yardarm. He is as constant as the sun, out in all weather, and generally one of the things that make daily life in this era feel “normal.”

My day has been filled with an early hike through Druid Hill Park, COVID baking, and this delicious lunch – Warm Lentil and Potato Salad.

The recipe is not mine, but it needs sharing. I made a few changes – you should, too, based on whatever is in your pantry.

To wit:

  • Subbed red onion for shallot
  • Used French lentils (but I think caviar lentils would be incredible here)
  • Subbed kosher dill chips for capers AND gherkins (it’s what I had – spicy pickles would have been nice)
  • Used coarse ground mustard
  • Subbed chives for scallions
  • Used new potatoes that were getting long in the tooth

Fresh herbs may be challenging, but I used parsley, thyme, and chives from my back porch. I imagine you could use dried thyme if you needed to, but the fresh parsley was sort of key.

Serving sizes in the recipe are true. Makes four big dinner servings, especially with a dippy egg cracked on top (which I did not have – see aforementioned COVID baking). I warrant this will be good cold, too, but you could warm it up if you feel so inclined.

Sharp and salty, zingy from the vinegar, and creamy with the flesh of new potatoes, this lunch feels like a healthy hug. I highly recommend it.

What’s on your plate today?