Holding on to Letting Go

 

Today my daughter was having a hard time. We arrived at a BBQ late. People were there that we didn't know.  As we entered the party, my daughter began to low-moan (a kind of quiet whine with no words.) The introverted side of her personality was taking over. She was overwhelmed by the requirement to be social. If I could have, I would have low-moaned too. The requirement to be social is not an easy one for me either. Instead I felt compelled to appear socially able and greet the people around me. I also felt very irritated by my daughter's discomfort and behavior. I knew exactly how she felt and perhaps because of this, I was very irrationally angry with her. Mothers: so unnecessarily hard on their daughters. After forty-five minutes of low-moaning into my arm and some dinner, she decided to go and play with the other kids. She was fine for the rest of the night.

The host's parents were there and I began to chat with them. They are grandparents. They asserted that my daughters' young ages are the best ages. That I will look back at these times as the highlight of raising them. It was hard to believe them. Forty-five minutes of low-moan does not appear to me to be a highlight. But, then the question did pop into my mind, "What if I could just let go...?" The rest of the question was not verbalized in my mind, but rather came in the form of an image of the crowd of people at the BBQ that I was trying to please, the appearance of perfection I was trying to present, the attempts to make my daughter into something she isn't. What if I just let go of all that? For a moment I was able to hold onto the idea of letting go. It was a relief. I will try to hold onto it longer next time.

H is for Half

Pages of the book, on my fireplace. Yep, my fireplace is very rocky.

It's been a long time! I guess I haven't written since it was 2011! Well, hello! This post is about the name of my blog, Both and Neither. I recently wrote a poem, entitled "H is for Half". It is part of a series I am slowly creating for an alphabet book I send out. That's a lot of layers of making and creating but basically, I am making a book. I send it out page by page. It's a book of poems. A is for Ask. B for Butter. H is for Half.

I wanted to share this with you because the poem I wrote for H explains the name of my blog. So, here it is:

H is for Half

She has always known herself to be half,
neatly divided into
two parts
two parents
one one thing
one the other.

Her, as a girl, declared
"I am half Japanese and half Irish,
and whole American."
Explaining herself to herself
Both and All.

Now, she feels,
Both and Neither.
(more Neither than Anything.)
There is no neat description any more.
It takes too long to say:
"I am half mother, half daughter,
half wife, half only child,
half worried, half religious,
half staying at home,
half writing this,
half of all that makes up a woman
these days."

Ancestry and heritage-
just the half of it,
perhaps influencing the look of things,
like eye shape and home decor decisions.
She can no longer sum it up by
Halves,
as if she ever could.