Thursday, February 6, 2014

How We Do It, Part XL





I hate it when people ask me what Sophie knows. I don't know what Sophie knows. I'll say everything and I'll think nothing. I'll say nothing and think everything. A man once asked me whether she knew anyone, whether she could feel love. He popped peanuts into his mouth. He was nice, I heard, and now he's dead. A child therapist once asked what her abilities were, how much can she really contribute to the family? After I removed the hatchet from my chest, I cleaved her in two. So, I don't know. I've hissed at Sophie in the night when she doesn't sleep, when she's seized and is awake, agitated, her brain a seeming jumble, a jungle -- trees, a forest, dense and dark and obtuse. A ruin, her life and mine. These are jungle thoughts. I've hissed at her in the night, not nice, so not nice, and I know she knows me then. She knows me and I'll imagine she hates me. I reframe the not-knowing to punish myself. Where she leaves off and I begin or where I leave off and she begins. I am thrust backward to a motel room in La Jolla, the year of El Nino. The rain pelting down. The navys of the two rooms we shared, the electric stove, the overhead fan. The crib. How she never slept. She was so beautiful, her hair a cap of ringlets, her head tilted. She smiled and folded her legs, even then.

28 comments:

  1. How could you not have these feelings? How in god's name, how in all that is holy and real, could you not?

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  2. Goddamn.

    It reminds me of religion. Some people struggle against unknowns. I want to punch the peanut man in the face.

    I am not surprised that you hiss. (I hiss, under less challenging circumstances.) I admire all the times you don't.

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  3. I always know your writing will be beautiful, will tell the truth. But I am still struck, struck by the power of it.

    I'm just reaching across the table to hold your hand for a moment.

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  4. The audacity of strangers never ceases to amaze me. I have to remember that it is their own fears and frustrations that drives them to say the things they say. And if you didn't hiss at your children, you wouldn't be a mother. Sophie knows love, of that I am certain, and that, in the end, is more than enough for any of us to know.

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  5. Given that we don't know much about our own minds (let alone someone else's), and given that we get to decide what is true and what is not, I'm all for making it up, especially when we talk about love. Love blows the mind, is beyond and above the mind, is unbound and boundless, reaches the unreachable, fills us with delight and with the kind of pain we think we cannot survive--and then we do. Mother love sometimes hisses at night, Elizabeth. There. It's true. Sophie knows you love her. That's true too. Life. Huh!

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  6. Introduction or prologue to the book? Very much present moment. Powerful stuff.

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  7. I have a grotesque vision of peanut-popping man strolling with the remains of cleaved therapist. How much can they contribute? Do they know love? The audience hisses.

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  8. Elizabeth, your words leave us breathless. Thank you for this account, this testimony. And I especially hate the idea of the man popping peanuts. I do.

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  9. I got nothing. God only knows what our children think. As for what does Sophie contribute to her family? The world? Sophie and Katie, they although people to be better people than they might otherwise be, and that's big.

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  10. Allow, I meant allow people to be better people than they might otherwise be. Shit!

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  11. This is beautiful. Hate and love,love and hate,if we fail to know both we fail to know either. Every parent hisses...but few write about it as well as u do.

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  12. This is so sharply, so eloquently wrought.
    I am in awe.

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  13. You write everything I feel- everything I would write if I took the time......

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  14. Jungle thoughts. I love that. You really are one hell of a writer.

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  15. Very powerful writing.

    Oh, those oblivious people saying thoughtless or stupid things - how do you not hiss at them too? Or claw at them, or duct tape their mouths? Or wish awful things upon them? The inner strength you must possess...

    I forget now where I learned this - maybe a book, or a pediatrician, but it was the notion that our children love us enough and feel safe enough with us to show us their very worst, without fear of rejection. I took that to heart and turned it around as needed, to calm the guilt when I'm at my parental worst, it's only because I love them enough to show them my very worst, who I truly am, and although I've never hissed, I have shrieked and sobbed and said things I wish I hadn't, and I try to forgive myself with the thought that we all love each other enough to show our very best and our very worst. Love is messy. Live is so very messy.

    I imagine your daughter could never hate you, you have shown her what true love is her whole life.

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  16. You make me feel it. Everything. "these are jungle thoughts."

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  17. well well put. I, of course, never hiss. I am nothing but sweetness and light around 4AM. We have sing alongs.

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  18. Can I like this again. I have read it several times and it improves. The end brings me to the beginning and I start all over, like I do everyday. I love this!

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  19. Damn, that's good writing

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  20. Nothing skins the meat down to the bone like caring for a sick child. But being able to express the it-ness of it all, there must be some healing in that.

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  21. She is beautiful. You are beautiful. Your words can change the world. Your words enlarge my world.

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  22. and you got me crying over here! I get it.

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  23. Such a heartfelt post Elizabeth, raw, real and very touching. Sophie is like an xray machine of the soul, she exposes the spiritually ignorant. You cannot help these folks to see, they do not belong yet. Picture them as spiritual infants who do not understand that by defining Sophie they will never know her, just as hissing is an important part of loving.

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  24. I don't know what my kids think - they remind me of that every day ... And I've hissed too ... Hissed often and then cringed ... But love survives

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  25. Yep, I definitely relate to the jungle thoughts at 4am. I'm trying to remind myself that my panicky thoughts at 4am aren't trustworthy. 4am mind isn't all that grounded or helpful.

    And let me assure you that I'm also trying to keep myself from screaming at Maybelle, "Motherfuck!" I'm doing a pretty good job of that lately, but the fact that I'm working on it suggests that I might have said it a time or two.

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