Author: Lisa Marie

She

She is stove-mouthed

and thinks hideously.

Between her teeth are scrolls

from cities asleep.

Death cartwheels on my lawn

mostly to impress her,

And because in his spare time he has a pinwheel fetish.

After dark she will write my eulogy and

I will thank her

and never know her name.

Signs

Last night Craig was sleeping with his head on my shoulder and I just realized I’ve been given a second chance at life. In another generation having diverticulitis and a hole in your intestines would be a death sentence. Your intestines would leak and you would get sepsis and die. But modern medical technology, as gross as this bag is, allows me to have a second chance to live my life and be with my husband. And that’s a beautiful thing because I can’t imagine being without him. And I can’t imagine leaving him alone to spend his days and nights by himself and raise our daughter alone.

Nonetheless I woke up this morning depressed by my bag. As I was sitting on the sofa feeling tired and depressed, Angelica randomly brought me one of my Bible devotionals. It was open to a page about guardian angels and I realized there’s an angel around me. I’m not alone. I have an angel watching over me. It gives me some comfort.  Maybe my guardian angel was convincing me to go to the hospital on the day my intestines opened up. I was in pain, but I couldn’t imagine that anything was seriously wrong so I was on the fence about going to the hospital. I almost didn’t go. If I hadn’t my intestines might have leaked and I would have had sepsis and died. I can’t imagine leaving Angelica motherless.

Later on I opened the devotional myself to a random page and the page landed on was about trials and tribulations. It was about God rewarding you at the end of a trial. This is a trial to me. But if I can get through this I will be rewarded with abundant life when it is over – if I draw closer to God.

It’s funny how these devotionals can really speak to you and just the way you need in times of stress and duress. It’s the workings of God.

A Daughter is Equal to a Son

“You need to have a boy to carry on the family name.” “It is your responsibility to have a boy. We don’t need more girls. We need a boy.” But, I explain, girls are wonderful and I would love ten more of them. My father had two girls and was happy with them. “Well then your family is history. They’re dead then.”

These were a few  of the remarks I got from my husband’s grandfather and his grandfather’s girlfriend. And I was really taken aback. Society has advanced so much but to hear that a girl child is not as welcome as a boy child really threw me for a loop. How could anyone look at my beautiful baby girl and see her as being less than the best? Why is a boy necessary or even desirable when we have her? And if I did have another baby why wouldn’t I want to experience the joy of raising a baby girl again?

My daughter is not a consolation prize. She is not what you accept when you can’t get something better. There is nothing better and I would not favor having a son over her.

Girls carry the family legacy just as much as boys do, and in fact girls are often the glue that holds a family together. It is women that knot the ties that bind. And many of us do carry our father’s names probably either by keeping our maiden names or using our maiden names as a middle name. Whatever accomplishments I may have in my life, whether it is getting a book published or something else, my father’s name will be emblazoned on me and I will do him proud. No, my children will not carry my father’s name, but what is the arrogance of man that he thinks he can pass down his label through every generation? Do men really think that when someone achieves something great six Generations from now anyone is going to look back and say well your great-great-great grandfather must have been a hell of a guy? You can’t pass on a name forever, and if you have posterity worth being celebrated and researched, their mother and her forebears will be researched also.

What we need are patriarchal family units, but a more matriarchal society. The roles and achievements of women are just as important as the roles and achievements of men, and we are as much part of our family lineages as males are.

So no, I don’t need a son. I have a daughter to carry my husband’s family and mine. She is as much a Minner and an Applegate as she is a McLemore, and she will be part of the McLemore line after she marries.  It is time to talk about the legacy of daughters.

Pink Ghosts

Pink ghosts make HIPPA violations.
A bed is growing into me.
One ghost whispers you are going to die
And another giggles.

I know I say
But not today and not tomorrow.

Walls hum.
My pills confer with my blood.

Pills are day makers
And skin often wants no hours dragged out of me.

Better to die like this, my sunburn peel once explained to me,
Young and perfect.
A museum of possibility.

Instead I gorge on sweet filled pills
And make mondays

The clock admires me.
Pretty ghosts titter.
My head screams. When the pills make days my head tries to send them back.

A hand holds my hand.
The morning binges and the evening purges.
Another day dead another in birth canal

Persuading new residents is such a drag,
Hissed the rosest spirit.

Significantly Overweight

“You’ll have to lose weight.”

“Am I really that overweight?”

“You are significantly overweight.”

That was my conversation with my doctor.  I am always aware of my weight, just as I am my hair color and complexion. But I never really felt bad about it.  I used to be small and now I am big. Still the same person. And I don’t mind being fluffy.

But now I have a doctor telling me that the surgery to reattach my intestines will go a lot easier if I lose some weight.   And poor eating habits (a diet very low in fiber) may be what got me into this debacle.  So maybe I do need to eat healthier.  I don’t want to lose a lot of weight, but even 20 or 30 pounds would probably make things easier for the doctor, prolong my life, and prevent this from happening again.

To that end I am making some changes. I went to the grocery store today and I got Caesar salad kits, pre cut broccoli and cauliflower, apples, grapes, and high fiber granola bars. Tonight, for the first time in my life, I ate salad for a meal. It was actually enjoyable, although I admit that I missed lasagna. But I’m still going to eat lasagna and other types of pasta. I’m not going to deprive myself. It’s just that for some of my meals I’m going to substitute oatmeal or salad or broccoli in for some of the unhealthy foods that I usually eat.  This should slowly but surely bring my weight down.

I am also going to order this special contraption that turns a regular bike into an exercise bike. That way I can start getting some exercise in the house. My foot never got better and surgery didn’t correct the problem, so I still can’t go on the long walks that I miss so much. I have a bike sitting in the garage that I bought this past summer, but I have found that I don’t like riding my bike in Moyock with people driving around me going 55 miles an hour. It scares me and I have to be so alert that I can’t even listen to music while I ride. However, it’s a nice bike and I would like to make use of it so this may be the perfect solution. And I can buy some sort of machine or Fitbit that tracks calorie burn. I will play music from my computer and just enjoy challenging myself to see how far I can go.

Change is a difficult process for everyone, and I am sure I will be no exception. But I am open to the process. I figure if I can find healthy things to do and eat that I actually like I am more likely to stick with this lifestyle change. I like food I bought today it just isn’t as sweet or cheesy as I am used to. Normally I hate salad but what I did was I got a Caesar salad kit instead of a regular salad and I found that I actually like the Caesar. I like the dark romaine lettuce and I like the Caesar dressing. If I have to force myself to eat salad I didn’t like all the time it probably wouldn’t work out. It’s hard to force yourself to do something you detest for extended periods of time. But by branching out and finding a salad I like I have insured that I will continue to eat salad. Same with the granola bars. I picked caramel granola bars. I know since they’re sweet I’ll eat them but they’re also high fiber bars so I’m getting some good nutrition out of them. This way I’ll actually eat those instead of letting them rot on my pantry shelf as I am wont to do when I end up not liking a food. If I like the exercise bike it won’t be such a chore to get on it. And if I can just listen to music and enjoy myself it may even become something I look forward to doing. When I was younger I used to ride my bike every night for one to two hours. It kept me thin in spite of my extremely bad eating habits! If I coupled eating healthy with exercising over the next six months until my next surgery I could be a world healthier than I am today.

Why Me

A week or so before we left for the trip and this whole health fiasco happened with my stomach, my husband put on an old episode of Mother Angelica.  In it she talked about being in a situation where she was asked to do things she didn’t feel capable of doing and she kept wondering why me. So she prayed to Christ and said, “why me?” And he answered her, “why me?”

I remember thinking how profound that was, and that maybe there was a reason I needed to hear that. Then two weeks later I am in the hospital with a hole in my stomach. A week after that, my stomach has been pulled through my skin and I am excreting into a large, uncomfortable bag.

At a time like this, it is easy to ask, “why me?” I have had a hard year with two surgeries and a bone infection and being on PICC line antibiotics for weeks. And now this. And I’m only 28. Why the hard year?

But then why did Christ, who was blameless as a flower, have to suffer on the cross and die. By rights it should have been someone who did such a terrible wrong that they earned it, but He was white as snow and still had to pay with His crimson blood for our sins.

My troubles are so small compared to His suffering. And life is not fair. And our Father takes care of all of us. And why not me? Diverticulitis is going to happen to someone. Why not me?

If I’m smart, I’ll use this trial to draw closer to God. It’s hard to imagine, but it is probably what I need.