Spring and Yellow and Poetry

It’s been a long time; a long time since I’ve written any words in my blog. 

Time has passed, full of worry about my mother and weariness from her care.  Time passed regardless of whether I wrote or whether she grew worse or well.  The months rolled on; time and circumstance changed both our lives.

Mum deals with her new fragility.   She struggles for strength, relishing every day and every accomplishment, pushing her energy forward to healing.   Back in her own home, she manages with help from family and a hired caregiver, a good friend.  She learns to cope with the changes in her body.

I am recovering my own energy and relishing the seasonal changes, the bright places in each day.   My focus on writing, particularly poetry, has returned, and though rusty, is responding to re-writes, polish and hard work.
 

The grey and brown days of spring give way to splotches of fresh green, flashes of colour—the goldfinches at the feeders, the dime-sized yellow crocus, the larger purple ones, the hint of red and gold on a blackbird’s wing. 

I welcome these signs of colour, renewed vigor and fresh life.    It’s been a challenging winter.  I am grateful for the lessons of love and the wisdom hard won, as I move into a transformed thankfulness for each new day.

Spring and yellow and poetry and purple fill the sweet breezes.  I am ready.

Photo and words are ©copyright 2009-2014 Carol Steel

The Mother of Us All

 

 

I'm back, was away for a time because my Mum's been ill.  What was diagnosed as flu, morphed into perforated bowel and emergency surgery, late Saturday.  She's still in Intensive Care but should be allowed to move to the surgery recovery floor soon.

When a parent is ill, family dynamics launch into intense versions of themselves.  As in all families, this is good and bad.  Anxieties get out of control.  Everyone scrambles to be helpful in whatever ways he or she is able.

We are a large family, wide-spread across generations and geography.  Mum is a mother of five, grandmother of seven, great-grandmother of eleven, plus all the in-laws and ex's. 

She is "The Mother of Us All."  And in crisis, we draw near, holding Mum in love and prayers, journeying with her toward her healing.

The healing may take awhile, so I may not be here as much as usual.  For now, it is more important to draw near and to accompany Mum.

I've Been Away

 

 

I've Been Away

I've been away from my blog and from my writing.

I am here now, yet I am not here--not fully.

My body feels like an alien creature, weary, uncooperative, aching from radiation burns.  It has turned on me, betrayed me with these cancer cells.  Still this body is mine.  I recognize myself in the mirror; my face, my fingers, my feet, my self.

Yet I am not here--not quite.  I struggle through the brain fog.  Is it Friday?  What happened to Thursday?  Will I write today?  Can I make sense?  Will I write and re-write only to quit in despair?

Depression and I have become well acquainted, more so on the days when pain and frustration are close companions.  I sleep 11 hours a night and nap during the day.  If I want to do dishes, or bake biscuits, sweep a floor or have a shower, I must do this in the morning before the energy dissipates.

It has been hard learning to be gentle and patient with myself.  Even though treatments ended last Wednesday, it will be weeks more before energy returns and the burns are healed.  I am recovering but want the process to speed up, to be done.  I want to be well...now, now, now.

This winter, I have been hibernating in the caverns of radiotherapy and sleep, caught in a haze of  depression and pain and medications.  But I am returning to myself, to clarity, to lucidity, to balance.  The "not here" times lessen as the "here" times lengthen.

I will be well again.

I am nearly there, back to "here", back to being fully present within myself.


Words and photo are copyright Carol Steel.  The photo is of the recent full moon through a haze of cloud and darkness.

Thoughts Following Surgery

Thoughts Following Surgery

Piercing sheaths of skin,
pain explodes
into unbearable fever.
Like wounded willows,
I leak,
form a crust,
mend into a ridge
and hollow.

Better to rustle
in the breeze
than to become brittle,
bitter against

the surgeon's charm.

This poem is written for Wordle 77 from The Sunday Whirl.  We are asked to write a poem using the twelve words given above.  If you'd like to see what others have written, click here.

Words are copyright Carol Steel.