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READS
RINGS
Years ago, my mom worked at a hardware store. There was a point during that job where I was pregnant and living there while waiting to join my husband in Monterey. One day, mom came home and began telling me about this woman she'd rung up. Now, it beats me how this conversation got started, but as I remember, the woman was a (theoretically) well-educated professor type and for some reason the conversation prompted her to declare her belief that disabled people should be sterilized so they could not reproduce. I, obviously, wasn't there but I am reasonably certain she had blue eyes and blonde hair. Anyway, mom said she defiantly piped that her disabled daughter was at home, expecting a baby, and the woman left in a huff.
The fucked up thing is that I look back now and I wonder if my mom really had the balls to stick up for me like that. Most of the time, her purpose in telling anyone I was disabled was to gain sympathy for herself. It's hard to envision her proclaiming my disability as something I'd overcome. Knowing my mom as I do now, she may well have made the whole thing up as a way to bolster herself against my husband so I'd hopefully decide to stay home with her--where I belonged.
Sometimes I wonder if every good incident I remember about her will end up being a lie.
design by fergie
Bits of fire in the sky push me east back home. I used to live in flames
but it's hard on the wings. Choke me. Smoke me. Scare me back. You try
but you just can't. I peel the layers in my spare time, and you're easy
to see through. I can fly, I've discovered on my own. I may be the lesser
butterfly but my wings are just as strong. Who are you to tell me to find
a place to land? I may be the lesser butterfly but baby watch me glide.
