Skip to main content

pillow


Today I am a pillow, a very undesirable, beaten up, thrown across the room pillow, the color or earthen mustard. In my infinite wisdom, I decided to use some Gestalting techniques to help Owen to process his emotions. That is how I became the pillow. It seemed brilliant at the time. Owen took one look at the pillow-mom and his lips curled into a sneer, eyes narrowed into a death stare and fists clenched tight. I knew then that the mom-pillow was about to get pummeled and there was nothing I could do but watch. Not feeling like talking, he began to punch and yell. In good form I cheered him along, feeling a burning ache for the pillow-me who was undoubtedly black and blue beneath her fluffy veneer. After a prolonged throwing and crying spree, he decided to smash the pillow-mom. Choosing only the largest and heaviest art books, he stacked them, unceremoniously, one on top the other until there was no breath left in the pillow. He smiled then. Satisfied. I, like my pillow self, was breathless. I suggested that we put mom back on the wall and talk to the Dad pillow. He agreed. The Dad pillow got only tears and when I suggested that he may be angry at the Dad pillow. He walked slowly up to him and lightly flicked the corner before hurrying back to the couch, while mom-pillow, having just received another kick, watched helpless, from her rumpled vantage.
Looking once more at the mom-pillow, Owen said with tears in his voice, "The divorce is all your fault, you are the reason I can't be with my Dad, or play my game-boy anymore, I hate you". With that he ran off. Leaving a flattened, defeated pillow and mother staring after him.

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

tree digging

Yes, I know it doesn't look like much.  It was only about 5 inches in diameter and 8 feet tall.  The root ball was no more than 3 feet deep.  But it was a sweet red-bud tree that we planted the year Bodhi was born, his placenta was buried in it's roots and like many of the trees in our neighborhood, it died (see this post to understand why) . I can't say that I mourned its death in a tangible way, rather it produced in me a sort of unnameable melancholy.  I am a woman who loves the spring.  I nearly live for it.  When the first signs of life emerge like a haze of hope, I drink in green with the passion of a desert crawling woman sipping at an oasis.  I gorge.  This year has been hard.  Our neighborhood isn't leafing out in native splendor, instead the tired trees seem to begrudge the effort, only offering a tender shoot or bud occasionally.  The north side of many trees appear to have given up all together, too tired after a long winter...
2 comments
Read more

Coraggio

When everything looks bleak and the darkness cramps against the cold, it takes courage to simply look out from imagined isolation toward the wide horizon of beauty available in every moment.  It takes courage to lean into the sea of life and trust the tide. When weary limbs no longer support us, it takes courage to trust our inner buoyancy and float.  It takes courage, in the face of darkness, to remember the light and sit in all our apparent blindness and listen, silently, to the still, small whisper within.  It takes courage, in that dark hour, when nothing else remains.  Eyes closed.  Eyes opened.  A glimpse, a memory, a fleeting vision of a light so bright it blurs the borders of things seen and things perceived into a comprehensive wholeness of being.  It takes courage.
4 comments
Read more

grief

Grief is defined as a deep or intense sorrow. I have been thinking a lot about grief, about it's wide and sticky reach, about the watery quality of it's absorption and the agonizing effort of swimming to shore. Intense sorrow happens. It is a part of life. Yet we press against it. We try to eradicate it. How? We encapsulate our grief in a story, thus effectively removing us from the immediacy of the pain. The mind promises salvation and begins to tell a story, over and over and over. We listen to the inner ramblings, the constant diatribe, the neurotic attempt to avoid the experience. When someone is hurting we listen to their story, we talk about it, we recount our own story, but we certainly don't jump in the waters of sadness, instead we sit on the bank of our familiar longing. Once, when I was floundering in deep grief, my youngest brother knelt next to me and held me for over an hour. He didn't speak. He didn't commiserate. He just jumped in the ...
4 comments
Read more