Mobile Home Park Life

Growing up, I imagined being a successful person, with a good job, a big house, a nice car, and travels that would take me all over the world.  I studied hard in school, got degrees, and then had a child with multiple disabilities.  My priorities changed, my financial situation changed, and we became a one income household, with my husband working hard so I could stay home and be available at all times for anything our children might need.  With help, we were able to move into a mobile home.  I struggled with feelings of failure and envy of others who had large houses, took expensive vacations, had all the latest gadgets for their kids, and what seemed to be a much easier life.  As time has gone on, I have reconnected to Jesus and trusted that He has me where I belong, doing what I'm supposed to do... that my vision of my life was not His vision for my life, and that this change was not failure, but just change.
Recently in church, the pastor spoke about how different the world of today is for children.  How children don't play outside, how they only have friends on the internet and have no personal relationships, how both parents often work and often leave children to raise themselves as latchkey kids.  It was then that I truly appreciated where we are.  Our houses are pretty close together...not as close as houses are in Queens where I grew up, but close enough for children to be able to arrange play organically by calling for one another.  We have a playground across the street.  We live with a dead end at the terminus of the park where the children love to play and can do so safely.  We are up against state land with fields, woods, and a creek.  This provides for plenty of exploration opportunities, more safe places to play, and interaction with all sorts of wildlife and nature.  Most houses have front porches where people sit and talk, and where the children play.  Most mothers are home, so when the children are home and playing, there is always someone with an eye on them.  In some ways, I suppose we're in a bit of a lost world where time has stood still.  People wave to one another while they drive by, stop to talk as they walk by, and parents know one another and one another's children.  I'm really grateful to be where we are, and am so glad that God knew exactly where we should be...where our children could thrive...where they could be children.

Watching a solar eclipse, playing in the pool, pretending to use a leaf blower, discovering a blue bird nest

Contemplating Marie Ponsot and Teaching Writing Again

Marie Ponsot, just as I remember her, quiet and gentle. She is 96 now.

When I was in college, I taught writing.  I was supposed to be a team teacher with a professor, but both of her parents tragically passed away, so I taught the entire semester on my own.  I loved it.  The professor in charge of the team teachers was Marie Ponsot.  She was a wonderful teacher.  She was a teacher, a writer, and a poet.  I read her teacher's handbook and used the text.  It was a great way to teach writing because it gave the students the freedom to write without fear of failure.  By the time it was time to hand in an essay to be graded, they had already worked and reworked it in class, and really learned how to write an essay, so they did very well.
My daughter is in a home school co-op, and I'm going to be teaching some writing classes there.  I repurchased those books from a used book store since I couldn't find my own.  It's been so nice to revisit Professor Ponsot's writing again.  I've been going through the exercises myself as well to be sure I remember how to do everything.  Then I have to modify the program from a college level course to a middle school/high school level.  I'm also going to be working with the younger kids on creative writing.  I think what I'll do is have them compose the story with each child taking turns for each sentence.  I'll write them all down and have the children illustrate their sentences and then make it into a book that they wrote themselves.  For the middle schoolers, we'll work on a few different types of poetry so they have some structure to follow and then see that they can all write a poem.  We can go through an exercise to describe in word pictures where they are right then...what they see, feel, hear, and maybe I'll bring in something so they can describe a scent too.  If the weather is nice, we will do this outside.  The older kids will learn how to write and compose an essay.  I think I'll teach them how to write a sonnet as well since they will be able to understand rhythm and rhyme schemes.
I'd love to give them some passion for writing and the confidence that they can do it.

Marie Ponsot's "The Green Dark" contains a poem about a place where she just sat and noticed what was around her like I do with my daughter when sketching/writing.  It is a place that was meaningful for me while growing up in Queens.  "Jamaica Wild Life Center, Queens, NY" is where I went for many walks with my father and grandmother and later took my nephews...I still have yet to take my children there.  The other poems are wonderful too...raw and honest describing her experience at her mother's grave, the truth that God's plan of sex is tender, nothing like the distorted view presented in pornography, and in fact, common speech, and experiencing strained relationships between parents and children. She chose some of these poems, purposely I think, to present to her college level poetry class, to have us reevaluate ideas presented to us in the present age and in the arena of a liberal college.  What a joy it was to be taught poetry by its author, and someone so honest and good.

Jamaica Wild Life Center, Queens, NY

Marie Ponsot 

On a south wind the sea air off

the flats and inlets of Jamaica Bay

mirrors as they do,

almost wavelessly, space recast as

flatness, long

diminishings of blue

borne lightly in toward earth colors, steel-lit ochres,

rose-mucky brown, greens.

I am a window that takes this in

like a door, or mouth.

I spit nothing out. 

I wait --like the egrets, 

egrets spread on distant trees

like a wash of table-linen

for the sun to dry.

Were I a room I'd be stuffed

by what windows admit

I transfigure

to the bite-sized images

intelligence eats & eats

eagerly.

Splotches of white

contract, lift

into springing figures; bird.

One by one, one is a leader, up

off the green dark

they go into sun.

They are coming this way 

to lunch in the shallows.

I too am good at hunger;

it never deserts me.

I admit as I am able

frank delight

in the deaths and decisions 

of visible appetite.

Deep delight;

it is for--not of--myslelf,

it is for you

I write

of the storage and freshness

of keepers

of the lfe

of appetite. 

Copyrite 1988 by Marie Ponsot

A Song Without Music

You Pull Me Back Up Again


I always want so much to please you

But I get so caught up in the world

I worry and feel that my faith is so weak

How can anyone see you in me

I just keep failing over and over again


I don’t feel your hand upon mine

Although I know that it’s there

I struggle to feel like I’m closer to you

Although I know you’re right here

I just keep failing over and over again


But you You pull me back up again

Every time that I fall

Yes, you pull me back up again

No matter how often I call


All I can see are my failures

I can’t be who you want me to be

All that I do is the wrong thing

There is no goodness in me

I just keep failing over and over again


Sometimes I feel like I just can’t go on

I forget to use your strength, not mine

So many days I feel tired and alone

I forget that you’re here by my side

I just keep failing over and over again


But you pull me back up again

Every time I hit the wall

Yes, you pull me back up again

No matter how often I call…

yes, every single time that I call.

Monday Weigh In

Well, I was hoping to lose more weight in the first week, but I lost 2 lbs.  So, now I only have 113.4 lbs more to lose.  At least I didn't stay the same and I didn't gain, so I'm grateful for that.  I have not eaten processed sugar for 7 days now.
Today's weather is much like that of Tuesday two weeks ago when I was camping...rainy and a high only in the 60's.
My main goal is not to feel discouraged.  This is going to be a long, slow process.  The truth is, this whole past year has been discouraging.  A little over a year ago, my husband left his job and got another job that paid much less and had terrible benefits.  So, for that whole year, we really didn't have enough money to pay the bills.  We had no more savings, and the medical bills keep coming because the medical insurance was dismal.  The furnace doesn't work, our shades are broken and need to be replaced, the hall bathroom is gutted with no plan of repair right now, the porch needs to be repaired and painted, the side stairs need to be repaired, wasps moved into the sandbox in the yard, our kitchen is not finished, our walls are full of holes from my son putting his head through them, all the doors inside our house are broken and need to be replaced, we have what was gutted from the bathroom lying in the side yard because we have no bulk pickup and no way to get the stuff to the dump, and we still have an autistic kid who has meltdowns often, who has been sick for months at at time over the past year, and we are just so very tired.  My husband did finally get a better job...his old job with a raise, but to catch up on everything from the past year is seeming impossible.  I finally saved some money, but we needed nearly $3,000 worth of work on our cars, so there went all that money.  Our tax returns went to one weekend away at at B&B for Jeff and me to try to keep our relationship strong, and then to paying for bills we'd been sitting on, buying stuff for the kids that they'd needed, and I don't remember what else...some to the cars.  I send lunch in for Jeff and Jeffrey every day.  We have Tracfones and one step above basic cable.  We are on budget payments for oil blend, propane, and electricity.  We go camping once a year for $144 for the week.  I shop at Aldi's and have a very limited food budget and meal plans.  I'm just not sure where to shave anything else off.  We've got pretty much everything at a bare minimum and still can't seem to keep our heads above water...right now I'd settle for just our nostrils or at least a snorkel.
I am trying not to think about how unfair things seem and how it seems like everyone else has it easier, because everyone has their own set of problems.  To covet is a sin.  I am trying to be grateful for all we do have, and not to worry, because God knows what we need, and he promises to provide us with what we need.  He says do not be discouraged, do not be afraid.  So, I"m going to just trust him and keep plodding along.

Marathon

Well, once again I am embarking upon a marathon.  I have 115.4 lbs to lose.  That's a lot.  It's a daunting number.  I have no desire to undergo surgery.  Over the past year, I have tried to follow a 1200 calorie diet, and I have failed miserably.  I also started eating sugar again, which was a terrible idea.  I also haven't been to the gym.  True, this year has been really tough.  However, that's just an excuse.  So, I have decided that it's time to take care of myself.  All my joints hurt and I have no energy.

This first week I stopped eating sugar again.  The withdrawal was tough the first few days, but now I feel much better.  I upped my calories to 1600, which is a one pound per week loss, according to My Fitness Pal.  That is much more doable than the 1200 calorie level.  It's so discouraging to fail day after day at calorie intake, so then I give up.  That's a really bad idea. One pound per week would mean that in two years I will be ten pounds from my goal weight.

The only times I'm ever successful at losing weight is when I do it with God.  When I give Him my sugar addiction, when I pray for Him to help me with temptation, when I surrender to Him, then it works.  When I want to give in, I don't bother to pray because I don't want him to stop me.  Also, I don't want food to be my god.  I want to remember to always turn to Jesus when things are tough, and to pray instead of eat.  I am wearing my Fit Bit and trying to stay active and get the house clean.

Last year has been really hard.  However, it's time to stop looking back.  Right now, today, this minute...what is a healthy thing to do?  Just keep going one moment to another with God.  Praying for that lamp to my feet and that light to my path...a little circle of light as from a lantern.  Anything I come to He will get me through.

So, here I go again.