Monday, April 14, 2014

Astonish and Admonish



I'm supposed to make up my bed with the clean sheets, but it's nearly 6:00 and I haven't gotten round to it. Don't lie on those! I admonish my son who has flung himself over the billows. I meant that word: billows. Decidedly not pillows. I am lying on the pillows reading a book, and he is bothering me.



I take a photo of myself while waiting for my son to finish up his sax lesson. I want to figure out what, exactly, it is that I feel, and I wonder if I might capture it in the self-portrait. Sophie is in the backseat of the car, a tendril of hair caught in the last of the snot that has been dripping out of her nose. She is getting over a virus before which and during which she had no seizures. I am astonished by this yet admonish myself for self-absorption, for not climbing back there to wipe her face. I am tired.

I read nothing in that photo, use no filter, dare myself to put it up here. (Tell me what to do). Admonish me.

Astonish and admonish. I am reading a wonderful novel called Astonish Me by Maggie Shipstead. I don't often use the word astonish, and I often use the word admonish. In fact, there's little in my life right now that would astonish, and certainly as a mother I too much admonish. Or maybe it should be the other way round: There is much to astonish and not enough to admonish.

Admonish me.
Astonish me.

7 comments:

  1. Stephen Gaskin said that the word "astonish" comes from the root "stoned." I have no idea if this is true and I don't care to look it up.
    Frankly, I would admonish us all to be astonished at life, whether for good or bad.
    And by the way, you are astonishingly beautiful.

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  2. I wish we could all meet for a drink. I would neither admonish or astonish either one of you. My mother is in the hospital with congestive heart failure my uncle awaits his military burial and I just spent 15 minutes in gut-splitting laughter with the FTD Florist guy trying to send tulips to my mother's hospital room. Holy crap.
    love,
    Rebecca

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  3. ps. None of this goes on my blog. My near death mother doesn't want my brother to know.

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  4. To astonish/admonish you would be too great a task, I fear. Flopping onto billows is much more my speed.

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  5. I'm too stoned with anxieties today to astonish or admonish you but I wouldn't mind floating for a while on the billows. I wouldn't annoy you.

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  6. beautiful picture, don't like the word admonish... never have...Instead, I am astonished at all you have done.

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  7. Your writing is pretty astonishing to me.

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