copy convos
i nearly put this entry under "dual grieving" because the trigger for it involves that fatal car wreck which took my beloved sons from me. this be our third mother's day since that fatal car wreck both big sis and big bro have been working on their mother's day gifts at school. mommy and daddy are always hot topic in the elementary schools. mother's day gives the topic industrial strength intensity. stepping small, praying big and letting god lead the dance. . . i fear big bro is internalizing extra this week.
their mommy and my daugter-in-law are distinctly separate topics. we called one another "monster-in-law" and "dumber-in-law." SHE started it. insert FB copy/paste wisdom here. . . my lawyer's meaner than your lawyer. neither of us had lawyers of our own, but our lists of numbers to call were equally impressive. for most of the time since their wedding in 2012, the domestic strife between she and my beloved son was intense enough that even their church advisors were suggesting divorce. child protective services would not let them visit the children together after the children were taken into protective custody. my son was still working to save his marriage. my DIL's door was still closed to me. i followed my son's lead. at the time of death, CPS was allowing them to visit the children together. DIL was opening herself to psychotherapy for her intense social anxiety. again.
through the gentle leaning into this stream of psycho snot knots and its close proximity to the grief of ES's estrangement, i began wondering if i was hearing the same conversations from people who are socially distant from one another. ES and DIL disrespected one another even more adamantly than they disrespected me. to the best of my studied ignorance, the two never shared a civil convo, but each had plenty to say about the other.
are the "monster-in-law" and "toxic mom" conversations carbon copies of one another with key terms changed to fit the newsfeeds?
copy convos?
again i leave the mood icon on the rapid cycling median. . . all over the proverbial map again. . .
Replies
peace arfie ((sending prayers))
(((((Arfie)))))
Here with you
Prayers continued
Gentlest of gentlest hugs <3
i've been shoveled lots and lots of chicken shit yesterday. literally. i have been neglectful of cleaning out the chicken coops and managed to whip myself into cleaning out the back coop and adding the wagon load of chicken shit out of there and into the compost pile. in addition to shoveling lots and lots of chicken shit, i've been mixing it, too boot. my herb garden is thanking me profusely for taking the time and trouble to brew them up some compost tea from the resulting mix. this particular compost pile in only around a year old, but methinks it is my best compost yet. we see how it ages. herstorically, i haven't been able to keep my gardens stable enough to age the compost i have made. my nearest miss was coopted by ? ? ? hubby and/or eldest son almost immediately after i laid it to age. my memories of that domestic war zone are far to repressed to keep sort hubby's projects from eldest son's. for sure, the plants didnae do well. don't let appearances fool you, wise man. it is compost, nay soil. dilution advised. please read instructions before use.
the ease with which literal composting flows into the metaphorical has made composting a valuable psychotherapy tool for me. as i shoveled and mixed the literal chicken shit yesterday, i found myself processing the many psycho snot knots of my 9 years of chicken keeping. the first six werenae even mine. on his birthday in december, 2013, hubby was in the grips of a gall bladder episode which kept him on the edge of death for around 3 solid months. eldest son gave him "six chicks for his birthday." the gentle humor of the gift was embraced appreciatively by all. while the levity was sorely needed, is there a doubt who got the job of fitting that humor into our suburban homestead? the spectators were pleased with the show, but i had more to learn than time to study while caring for a gravely ill husband. my smoking/meditation corner was on the back porch. the six chicks werenae the least bit offended by my second-hand smoke. my private corner was their first roost at the urban homestead. i donae believe there were ever any family witnesses to the meltdowns i had over not having been mindful enough to notice the piles of chicken shit in the chair before i collapsed in exhaustion. damn, it's on the arms of the chair, too. . . the brats scratched all the potting soil out of the pots, too. . . and. . . and. . . my give a damn is busted. i donae believe my give a damn stayed busted for long enough for the rest of the family to have to sit in chicken shit while they enjoyed the show. maybe. . . my memories of that era remain highly and deliberately repressed. the peace talks in the domestic war zone havenae been going well enough to bring me in from self-exile.
fa is currently in that initial phase of learning about chickens after an urban lifetime of romanticizing them. those abandoned farms of my childhood gave me just enough exposure to chickens that i had a few reality checks under my belt on the romance, but it was still a shock to my then-current suburban lifestyle. i can empathize enough to be more humored than dismissive of her reactions. she gives me her complaints in spanish and i havenae ever kept chickens in spanish. nor am i well versed in dominican colloquialisms. for me, these conversations are far more language study than breaking news.
as i shoveled and mixed, i found myself wondering if i had just spotted my first inter-lingual set of copy convos. chickens and pollos are far more consistent than people and gente. ditto for metaphorical shit and mierda de cualquier pais.
i earnestly donae know if this snot knot belongs under "cuaresma" for the linguistic snot knots or here for the 20 minute chicken keeping expertise. both, i think. a linguistic irony is that one needs a high linguistic level to talk like a fool. 20 minute experts tend to use many clever turns of phrases to disguise their ignorance. my grandparents were experts, so i am an expert by proxy. grandparents who kept chickens way back when are common to both worlds. i havenae the linguistic skill to translate that into the many dialects of spanish, but i suspect it will sound just as foolish in every one of those dialects.
but the snot knot here feels like the same phenom i have faced in english from 20 minute experts with third generation knowledge. in my own case, i didnae even have the third generation knowledge to guide me. i didnae know my grandparents, but i have considerable evidence that they were of the agricultural merchant/engineering class who were far more likely to have campaigned for the ordinances to keep the chicken shit in the country where it belongs. so or no, proof isnae currently available to me. all available evidence points to hubby's birthday present in december 2013 as my first exposure to live chickens. until that day, it was plenty to watch them from afar. my first exposure was well laced with the resentment of having somebody else's fast-moving ball thrown into my court without help or preparation. my first efforts were fraught with unexpected disasters i had to handle alone with loud critiques from the 20 minute experts who never bothered to ask what was actually happening. 20 minute experts seldom care much for real time problems.
the effort to learn such wisdom in another language hardly seems worth the effort, even without the dialectic wars. thank you for sharing, wise one.
hm-m-m-m-m. . . this particular sequence of psychoweirds has woven itself further over a longer period of time than i thought. this particular go-round was triggered by the need to murder 10 of my feather babies. avoiding that need has fissured off into some far-reaching psycho-yaddahs. nearly all of my intrusive thoughts, etc., have been in spanish. ?por que? since returning to the land of los-gringos-no-se-puede from my language immersion in ecuador, tricks of bilingual thoughts have been active, but the intrusive thoughts of english-spoken stresses have remained in english. only the brain kinks of prohibition are the main intrusive thoughts which have been in spanish. hearing spanish still triggers my knowledge of spanish and avoiding the crime of understanding spanish remains a royal mind fuck to me, but the social distances between the two languages remains great enough that it seldom enters my domestic realm. even with the routine use of the farm assistant (fa) who has been with us since 2020, all of her friends and family reflexively change the language in my presence. fa's proficiency with english is growing enough that she communicates freely with hubs and i encourage her to practice english with me, as well. so far, she is still enjoying the greater ease of spanish and i'm okay with that, as well. i love having the children well-exposed to other languages right here where they live. the world has grown far too small to speak only one language.
anyhoo. . . as i have been attempting to untangle the psychotic snot knots of murdering feather babies and fielding massive guilt attacks over the proximity of 11 roosters crowing competitively so close to fa's bedroom windows, it occurred to me that the reason for **my** prohibition against discussing chickens with me belongs here, under "copy convos." fa's approach to farming is mighty close to the commercial approach still used here, though the conversations have grown in civility since i began having them in the 60's. not too much of that new, more civil vocabulary has reached spanish yet. at the university of azuay in ecuador, the resentment toward learning still more "palabras gringas" was far greater than the drive to tame the disputes between the local industrialists and environmentalists. but then, my classmates were still teenagers. my sense was that it was easier for them to learn new words than understanding that conflict between environmentalists and industrialists. after more than half a century of participating in those debates, i am even more confused than i was in the 60's. ?porque no puedo?
anyhoo. . . enough of the deflecting, already. . . there are roosters in the brood house and brooding season has commenced. . . them feather baby throats need slitting. NO. . . NO. . . DON'T MAKE ME GET BACK TO REALITY! ! !
a sub-drama within the current border crisis is the mexican-american man i half-expected to be la profesora's visa groom. i missed the pesky detail that he chose not to patriate. this pesky detail came to my attention when some family drama or other landed him in county jail because of domestic drama from long ago resurfaced. the niece pressing charges (sexual misconduct?) is of the family factions who chose to jump the citizenship hoops. the next visitors on this chain of events were immigration officials. i was relieved to hear la profesora's report that the immigration officials de mi pais were far more polite than the immigration officials of her country. progress over perfection. he has even been given the right to personal phone calls as he sits in the immigrant detention center in the nearby city named for the mythical city of "alvarado." bienvenidos a las calles de oro.
i asked hubs if there was any update on the owner of the abandoned vehicles and temporary storage unit we loaned him in our big barn. "well. . ." he stammered, "the answer is still next friday. this could be the friday it really happens."
progress over perfection. . .
in the bilingual chaos of the current chaos lives a 2nd(?) grader named, "johnny." i feel safe using johnny's real name because thhe sheer quantity of the name provides a far more effective mask than my clever acronyms. johnny's house was a landmark on our drive into town for my precious princesses because he rode their bus every so often. i was attempting to develop their internal GPS systems, so johnny's house was an especially good landmark in that effort. there is a similar compound much closer to home which they often mistook for johnny's house. by the time we caught johnny playing in the yard and stopped to say howdy, the girls had spotted the red shed behind johnny's house which distinguished it from the compound closer to home. while the children played, johnny's mom told me of johnny's participation in the local school district called, " the world language program." i attended the district presentation and? ? ? well? ? ? the presentation was starkly similar to all the other academic attempts to recruit lab rats. this was my first opportunity to gain a lab rat review.
baby sis becomes eligible for the program this year as she progresses from pre-k to kindergarten. her quasi-bilingual big bro wasnae eligible because he was already in first grade. no exceptions to the kindergarten startup rule. when big sis became eligible, we were still to fragile to handle a two school agenda. the two school agenda would still be a strain on the home front but my personal hopes arenae too far from the experimental program. it could be worth the effort. maybe. i have serious trust issues for the way academia treats their lab rats.
when we stopped to invite johnny to the birthday party, i picked johnny's mom's (jm's) brain for more lab rat perspective. her eyes shone hopefully as she opened her brain for the picking. alas, our little pitchers had their big ears tuned to the discussion to allow for free speech. i begged jm to come to the party so that we could talk in more detail while the little pitchers were busy partying. she did. the academic piece of the discussion was of great interest to the fellow parents in attendance. i didnae see even a hint of performance anxiety as she gave her presentation while simultaneously performing her maternal duties. bravo, bravo, my healing warrior, though i remain a bit skeptical of the experimental program. you were a bit robotic on that presentations, my hero. nothing an oral presentation workshop can't fix.
our more personal exchange came later as we rocked on the porch swing and watched the party-goers scurry back to their busy lives. i was psychotically irrational --in english, of course-- as i discussed my strictly personals on the cultural chaos the academic dreamers are attempting to address. she let me rest my weary head on her well padded shoulders, she sympathized from the heart as my tears rolled uncontrollably. perhaps one day she will be able to offer equal empathy to mis lagrimas. just a-hoping and a-praying.
i am far from certain that this entry belongs under "copy convos" but? ? ? my quiet voice told me it belongs here. the mystery of how it fits just might reveal itself at godspeed.