Guilt

I'm no poet, but when emotions are swirling through my mind and my head is crowded with thoughts, poetry provides an amazing release. I sit down and write a poem probably once or twice a year, but this was the first time that I'd ever shared any of my work.

Poetry allows a writer to express and explore raw feelings. No reasons. No stories. Pure emotion.

Our emotions are what unifies us as people. Regardless of their race, ethnicity, religion, sex, social status, sexual orientation, intelligence, education--everyone experiences love, happiness, passion, ecstasy, fear, nervousness, sorrow, pain and suffering. The words to describe these emotions, the causes that evoke them and the way a person deals with his/her emotions may differ from culture to culture and person to person, but everyone feels.


The holiday season always sends my emotions into over-drive, but as I grow older, the resentment, anger and sadness I am used to feeling time of year has given way to a much more powerful emotion, guilt.

My parents separated when I was just two-years-old. I have just one single memory of their brief time together. I was sitting at the top of our chocolate-brown carpeted steps, watching my parents through the wooden rungs of the banister, with my knees tucked into my chest and arms wrapped around my shins. I could hear yelling, the sound of glass breaking, and then I saw blood. Or, at least what I thought was blood. Turns out my father, in a fit of immaturity, had doused my mom with Heinz 57. 

After my parents divorced, I lived a dual life. My mother and father shared dual custody. I had two very, very, very different families. My mom's house was the type of house that children should grow up in. In her house, I was encouraged, disciplined, loved and cared for. I wouldn't say I was spoiled, but I sure never went hungry.

At my father's house my life couldn't have been more different. He remarried three times, twice to the same woman (who he apparently just recently divorced again). With his wives came step-siblings for me, and with their inevitable divorces I would once again become an only child. He introduced me to the dark-side of life--to motorcycle gangs, a plethora of drugs, over-doses, criminal life and jail. By twelve years old, there wasn't a drug I hadn't seen done, and by the time I was sixteen, there wasn't one I hadn't tried myself. He was too fucked up to see anything wrong with doing hard drugs with his pre-teen daughter. He was too fucked up to remember to buy groceries. He was too fucked up to keep his promises and too far gone to love me.

Throughout my childhood, I bounced back and forth between these two worlds. Sometimes I would get tired of being hurt, and I would swear-off my father, his home and lifestyle. I would stay with my mom and wait for him to call. He never called.

His parents, my grandparents, used every Thanksgiving as an excuse to force my father and I together. He would make empty promises that things would be better if I came back...he wouldn't talk down to me anymore...I could have a kitten...There would be no more fighting...no more drugs.

Every year, I believed him. And, every year I was let down. My anger, resentment and sadness grew until is consumed me. I hated him and everything that made me think of him, including the holidays.

Now, I find myself consumed by a new emotion, guilt. I am no longer angry at my father. I feel sorry for him. He is financially ruined and in poor physical and mental health thanks to the bad decisions he's made throughout his life. I haven't spoken to him in a couple of years now. It hurts to much. Hearing his distant and faded "junkie" voice repeat the same things over and over, makes me sick to my stomach. The last time I stepped foot in his house, I literally threw-up. The last time I spoke to him on the phone, he blamed me for our failed relationship. I guess he has to lie to himself to live with himself.

I feel bad that I'm not strong enough to look past the past. I feel guilty that I don't try to have a relationship with my father. I feel horrible that I know he won't live much longer and that doesn't make me want to reconnect with him. I feel selfish because of my need for self-preservation. I feel frigid because I'm not sure I have any love left for the man who calls me his daughter. All of these emotions combine together to create a guilty feeling that eats away at my soul.

PS - Thanks to all of you who left comments on my poem. Your insights and support inspired me to write this post. Writing helps me understand and cope with my thoughts, and hearing from all of you reminds me that I'm not alone in my experiences. Thank you!

Keepsake

I received this lovely "Keepsake Blog Award" from Garf at A Garf Secret. A testament to technology's awesome power to connect people, I have had the pleasure of getting to know Garf, who lives on the other side of the globe in India. He is a kind, generous and thoughtful person, who values love, happiness, kindness and friendship above all else. Who couldn't get on board with that?

The "Keepsake Blog Award" is on of my favorite blog awards out there, because whoever receives it is supposed to post a photo of a keepsake that they hold dear to his/her heart. 

Just like looking through an old photo album, objects can remind us of fond memories, of loved ones who have long-passed, and of our former selves. 

These ceramic elephant plant stands that now decorate my home belonged to my grandma Libby. She had them at her apartment in Baltimore, and at her apartment in Perryville. And, at her apartment in North East. My grandmother followed us each time we moved to a new town--she always lived within five or ten minutes of us. 

She smoked like a chimney, so her apartment walls had a slightly yellow tinge. These elephants guarded the entry of each of her apartments, topped with spider plants with waxy leaves that touched the floor. When I was really little, I liked to run my hand along the smooth, cool ceramic and drive my matchbox cars around the base. I always loved these elephants, and just before my grandma Libby passed, she gave them to me. 

My grandma was not the kind of grandmother who brought you gifts and baked cookies, but she did knit me lots of sweaters. Itchy, wool sweaters that I hated but my mother made me wear. As a kid, I didn't understand that each sweater was stitched with love. 

She had a nasal voice (think Fran Drescher, without the Queens accent),  a sharp tongue and a critical eye...and don't think she cut me a break just because I was her only grandchild. When I was in fifth or sixth grade, I had a tie-dye folder with a peace sign on it. My grandmother took one look at it, sneered and said "What are you some kind of hippie now? I hate hippies. Your mother was a hippie, you know." That was my grandmother. She was hard on those she loved, and she certainly loved me. 

Tell me about one  of your treasured keepsakes?

It's nice to feel loved

Since yesterday's tragic Metro accident, friends and family have been calling me to make sure I wasn't on one of the trains that collided.

My mom was the first to call. When I picked up the phone and said hello, the first words out of my mother's mouth were "thank god you answered." She proceeded to tell me about the collision on the red line, which apparently had happened right in the middle of my commute. On the red line.

I had spent 30 minutes stuck on the tracks near Gallery Place with no information except, "there's been an incident ahead." It wasn't until my mom called that I knew the severity of the "incident."

The next phone call came from my friend Stephen in Philly. Word travels fast. Then Jack's parent's called to make sure I was OK. Within three hours of the collision, three people had called me. By 8 a.m.this morning another friend had sent me a concerned text message.

It's nice to know that there are people out there who care about me. It's nice to feel loved.

This one hit too close to home

On Wednesday morning, 39-year-old Stephen Tyrone Johns woke up and put on his uniform, carefully placing his hat and tightly lacing his boots. He probably rode the Metro to work that morning, with his mind occupied on the mundane details of his life--What do I have to do this weekend? What's for lunch in the cafeteria at work today? Should I switch to satelliet?

The Metro doors opened at Smithsonian Station and Johns stepped off. He entered the Holocaust Memorial Museum--1 1/2 blocks from where I work--and took his post at the front-door security checkpoint. It was a day just like any other. Except it wasn't.

Johns watched as tourists passed through the metal detectors and he searched their bags carefully following protocol. Nothing out of the ordinary.

Suddenly, around 1 p.m. a man walked through the front doors of the museum wielding a rifle. He opened fire in the crowded vestibule. BAM! BAM! BAM! BAM! BAM! Five or six shots are fired, Johns has been shot. The wound is fatal. Just like that a man's life is over.

My recount of Johns' morning before the shooting is pure speculation, but the details of his tragic death are not. This man woke up and went to work, just like he would on any other day, except this time he didn't make it home.

The shooter was an 88-year-old anti-Semitic, white supremacist. He shot up the Holocaust Memorial Museum to show the world his hate for Jews. For my people. My family. Me.

Writings attributed to the gunman on the Internet say the Holocaust was a hoax and decry a Jewish conspiracy to "destroy the white gene pool." Reading these words make my mouth go dry, my head throb and my eyes fill with tears.

I have relatives who are Holocaust survivors and had relatives who were not so lucky. My great grandfather was believed to have been murdered by the Nazis. My grandfather Max spent his entire adulthood searching for answers, but his father's body was never found. My grandfather's brother, Bernard, can recount horrific tales of Jews being shot point-blank in the head by Nazi soldiers right in public. My great aunt Sarah almost died of starvation in a ghetto in Poland and narrowly escaped death by assuming a false identity.

To deny the Holocaust is to deny my family history and to devalue my loved ones' pain and suffering.

After this tragic event, this disgusting hate crime, I feel an array of dizzying emotions from anger and fear to guilt and a sense of responsibility.

I am angry at those who hold hate in their hearts and have no respect for the life.
I am afraid that something like this could happen "in my own backyard."
I feel guilty for all the times someone has used "Jew" as a derogatory term in front of me while I stood silent instead of standing up for myself and my people.
I feel a sense of responsibility to share my family's story, to let people know that the Holocaust was real. The people who died was real. The emotional scars left on the survivors and their families are real. I am real.

Happy Fucking Hanukkah

I've always considered myself a "bad Jew," but after this Hanukkah, I am definitely going to hell.

It was the second night of Hanukkah, and my parents and I were standing in the kitchen of a beach house in Alligator Point, Fla., sipping Patron Reposado from white wine glasses and listening to Jimmy Buffet on "Oyster Radio." My mom held up her glass and yelled "L'chaim!" Our glasses clinked together, and she continued the cheers with a "Happy FUCKING Hanukkah!"

In place of a menorah, we attempted lighting two lighter fluid soaked pieces of charcoal over the hibachi. My mom and I began: "Ba-ruch ata, A-do-nai E-lo-hei-nu, me-lech ha-o-lam, a-sher ki-de-sha-nu be-mits-vo tov."

Thanks to howling wind, our "candles" wouldn't light. At this point it was declared that "Jesus was too strong down here in the south." We gave up and went inside.