You know you are too tired when a fly lands in your coffee and the thought crosses your mind to just scoop it out instead of making more. Ugh.
The details of a memory.
Sometimes a memory, long since forgotten, will choose to emerge and when it presents itself you have to decide what to do with that memory. I suppose you can try to bury it deep inside, try to send it back to where it came from. You can cling to it and incorporate it into your life. You can let it control you or you can attempt to make peace with it.
I have tried to bury many memories but there are always more waiting just below the surface for their chance to escape. I’ve clung to many a memory and I’ve tried to rid myself of many more. I’ve found the worst of them simply need to be remembered. They need to be acknowledged and only then will they blend into the fabric of your life and become a part of that which makes you whole.
Some are too painful to find complete peace with. I’ve tried. In my quest for closure I realized a memory itself is sometimes more than what it appears to be. We only focus on a small part of it, the part that hurts or brings us fear, but every memory has something that came before and something that came after. Every memory has little pieces buried within it that can change your perception of it.
The memory will always be, we cannot change what has already come to pass, but acceptance can be found if you take the remembrance apart like a puzzle and examine each little piece as if it were a memory of its own. Sometimes you’ll be surprised at what you find.
An old memory recently came to call, a quite unwelcome visitor. Instead of going through the tiring and pointless process of trying to push it back into the depths of me, I decided to find a place within me where it could finally be laid to rest. I wasn’t sure how I was going to get past the pain, but I examined it and began to find little details I hadn’t noticed before. Those details led me to an unexpected place.
I found a blessing in that awful memory. I realized my life was changed by that moment in time in more ways than I’d ever known. It was the details I sought out that derailed the way it usually unfurled itself. My past experiences have shaped me into the person I am today. I’ve always known that. What I didn’t know was just how much the hidden pieces of them had changed me and altered the course I would take in life.
When I was a little girl we had the most beautiful couch. It was velvety to the touch and colored like silken sands glistening in the sun on a far away island beach. It’s cushions where soft and welcoming. I loved that couch. I loved everything about it, especially the space in the corner where it met the wall; it was like a secret entrance. It was big enough for me and my baby sister to crawl into and find comfort and safety when the bad things happened.
I kept a few of my books hidden there, my favorites. Sometimes I would read them and pretend I was part of the stories. I would sail away on a magical boat or soar through the sky until I found a rainbow to land on. I would take my little sister on whispered adventures through mystical forests of fantasy. I traveled many miles and met many people during my journeys. Sometimes though, I would press my books tightly to my ears so I couldn’t hear the violent storm my mother was caught up in. Sometimes my tears stained the pages, sometimes the pages dried my tears.
I would hold my precious books close to me and pray the bad things would stop. I would hold them closer still when it was over and my mother would fall to the couch, staining the velvety fabric with crimson drops of life and crystalline tears sorrow. Sometimes I crawled out and cried with her and other times I stayed still and quiet so she wouldn’t see I was crying too.
We walked out the door one day and left the couch and everything else behind. My favorite books were forgotten, left to lay behind the soft, sand colored couch. I longed for them, for they had been my armor for so long and I feared without them I couldn’t be strong if I needed to be. A day soon came when it was safe to go back to the house with the sand colored couch and I reclaimed my books.
When I re-examine the couch of my memory now, it is different from the one my innocence had imagined. The velvety fabric faded, the softness replaced with wear. The cushions were flattened, their comfort long since used up. It was the color of carpet when boots have been tracked in on a rainy day. It was a nice enough couch; it just wasn’t the couch my young mind had made it to be.
The small space in the corner where the couch met the wall was barely big enough for one to squeeze into, but it had been a fortress for two. I know now the protection I thought it provided us was more of a longing than a reality. I don’t know what happened to the sand colored couch after we walked out that door for the last time.
I don’t know what happened to my favorite books. One by one they must have been left behind and lost as the years of my childhood quickly passed. I hope they were found and treasured by another and I pray my tears are the only ones that ever fell to soak into their pages.
My books, like that couch, where a part of my past that provided both protection and solace for me. The couch has become a symbol, a reminder not everything is always how it seems to be. Maybe it’s why I always see beauty in the brambles. Those books, my first books, the ones my mother used to teach me to read, somehow took me on one last journey with them, one which led me into the future.
I became a part of those stories and they will always be a part of me. I was given a moments peace in the midst of chaos because someone once sat down and penned simple words to a page, never knowing they would one day shield a little girl from the absolute pain of her world, even if it was just for a moment in time.
I honor and cherish those who carried me away on their quill when I had nowhere I could run to. They were my best friends when I had none. The poets and the storytellers who filled page after page with pieces of themselves were my heroes. They will always be my heroes. They gently held my hand and waltzed with me as I put pen to paper and began my own dance with words.
The pain of that memory and many more like it still linger, but they don’t have the hold on me they once did. I took what I thought represented nothing but sorrow and anger and fear in my life and I pulled something worthy out of it. I know God was with us there in the little corner behind the soft, sand colored couch. He gave me what I needed to get to where I am and I will forever praise him for that gift.
Crystal R. Cook
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I did what I had to do.
The things we do for our families . . . It’s been 8 years and I am still recovering.
I crossed the line this time. I stepped out of the light and into the dark and became one of them. You have to know I didn’t seek this out, it just sort of happened. It’s only temporary and it most certainly does not change my opinion of them. Besides, I’m not exactly doing what they do.
I suppose this makes me a sort of hypocrite. Well, so be it. It pays ten dollars an hour and Christmas will be here soon enough. Sometimes you just have to do things you never thought you would do to provide for your family. I realize I am justifying right now, but it is justified justification. Shit’s expensive and there are four of them expecting something under the tree.
I should tell you what it is I’m doing so your mind doesn’t completely wander away with thoughts of all things illicit and odd. I can’t believe I’m going to admit to this . . . Okay, here it goes.
Hello. My name is Crystal and I am a telemarketer, of sorts. I’m not like the others. I can stop anytime I want. I can.
I never intended for this to happen. I saw an innocent ad that shouted out to me, ‘Campaign phone staff needed immediately – Compensation $10.00 hourly.’ A strange feeling came over me and I was compelled to pick up the phone and dial the number.
Now anyone who knows me, knows picking up the phone to call someone is totally out of character for me. In the past two days I’ve made more phone calls than I have in the past thirty-six years, and that’s saying something seeing as how I’m only almost twenty-nine-ish-something.
For four hours a day I dial, talk and hang up. Dial, talk and hang up. “Hi, my name is Crystal and I’m volunteering today for blah, blah, blah and we’re calling voters . . . yada, yada, yadda. So can we count on your YES vote on Proposition OH I CAN’T BELIEVE I’M DOING THIS!”
My ‘target’ list, I must say I find it peculiar they call the innocent people on the other end of the line targets. Anyway, my target list is comprised of every registered voter over the age of sixty who live peacefully within the boundaries drawn by the county lines. I am given a gigantic stack of pages with their names, numbers and ages printed neatly in teeny little letters to ensure my eyes as well as my neck and my arms ache – Hey, you’d be surprised how tiring it can be making call after call after call after call after . . . Sorry.
I have mixed emotions throughout the day. I feel bad calling people whom I know I am disturbing and yet I actually do believe the issue we are seeking support for is important. I can’t say a day in the life of . . . of . . . a phone solici – no, a Communications Specialist, isn’t sheer tedium and boredom, but I can say there are brief interludes throughout the day that keep you from throwing the phone against the wall and running far, far away.
I’ve spoken to sweet old ladies, and not so sweet old ladies. I’ve conversed with adorably rambunctious old men and some not so adorable grumpy old men. I know the medical history of approximately twenty percent of the senior citizens in my community and I now know it is especially hard to get to the phone when you are eighty years old and have bunions.
Only three more days.
Crystal R. Cook
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Keep Scrolling.
It saddens me, and pisses me off to be quite honest, when people are hesitant to post things online for fear of offending someone or being called a hypocrite or judgmental or racist or whatever else they may be called because they happen to be human, because they have the audacity to think for themselves.
I’ve got news for everyone, someone is always going to be offended. People need to get over themselves.
I don’t think people understand what offended means.
We exist in a society filled with those hell-bent on exerting their rights to say, do, think, and act as they please without interference, but it’s not enough for many of them. They seem to want everyone else to agree with their views, to applaud their actions and if they do not, they cry discrimination of some kind.
You don’t have to fill your personal pages with Bible verses to express your faith, but you should not be afraid to if you choose to do so. If someone does not share my faith, fine. If they do not agree with my political opinions, I’ve no problem with that. I do have a problem however, when they decide I am infringing upon their rights by simply having and sharing those thoughts that may happen to differ from theirs.
I don’t think people understand what rights are anymore.
There are those who want all dissenting opinions, beliefs, ideals, and values not in line with theirs removed, expunged from existence. They fight to destroy them while crying foul if their own sensibilities are called into question.
Every time I open my Facebook page or click on a blog I chance being confronted by something I don’t agree with, with something I find in bad taste or bad humor, I chance finding offense with something someone else thinks or believes.
I can keep scrolling or I can get my panties in a bunch . . . Scrolling requires less effort and time.
I don’t always find what my Facebook friends find funny. I follow blogs and visit websites and see things I may not always agree with so I keep scrolling.
Every now and then I’ll add my two cents in, when it is something I truly feel the need to say, I do it without accusing them of trampling over my feelings or aiding in the destruction of society because I don’t agree. Sometimes a good back and forth can be a good thing. Too bad no one seems to understand the art of debate anymore.
Respect is a two-way street. I know my cyber family does not subscribe to my every belief or my opinions, they don’t have to. They keep scrolling. I respect them for it.
Keep scrolling . . .
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The things I do to pass the time
I’ve been strangely preoccupied with vowels today . . . I tend to get stuck on various oddities and random subjects when I am anxious. My son boards an airplane on Saturday, he is heading home. I’m happy he’ll be home soon, but nervous about the trip. So to deal, I obsessed on vowels all day. Who knows, the topic could arise one day and you’ll be glad you read my ramblings. It could happen.
The English language, language in general, is filled with all sorts of interesting oddities. Since I was old enough to read I have been fascinated with words. I seemed to have a knack for picking up on some of their various little quirks, one I found particular delight in were words with vowels, not just vowels, almost all words contain vowels, it was words with vowels in alphabetical order that caught my fancy.
There are many words which contain letters arranged alphabetical order such as almost, begin and biopsy, but even more interesting are those composed of vowels in the exact order in which we first learned them, a, e, i, o, u and yes, sometimes y.
One such word is ArsEnIOUs (arsenious), which means something derived from or containing arsenic. Another is sUbcOntInEntAl, while at first glance subcontinental doesn’t appear to fit the alphabetical mold, it does, it just does so backward. Another backward vowel order word is dUOlItErAl (duoliteral).
In yet another example, fAcEtIOUslY (facetiously) the often misunderstood Y has been included. So far the longest word known to have all five vowels is order (for those of you who can overlook the Y as a vowel) is phragelliorhynchus with eighteen letters, while not found in the dictionary, it is widely recognized in the scientific realm as a protozoan. The shortest I’ve seen thus far is the word areious with just seven letters. The longest word I have found with the vowels in reverse order is another scientific term, this time for a crustacean, punctoschmidtella with seventeen letters.
Science has provided us with more than a few of these fun and nearly impossible to pronounce words with well placed vowels. Lamelligomphus, a type of dragonfly, annelidous is something to do with segmented worms; I didn’t study further into this particular definition. Adecticous means with immobile mandibles. Juloidea (reverse order) is a family of millipedes, super millipedes to be more precise. Another in reverse order is a rodent by the name of muroidea.
There are more than a few words which have become nearly obsolete in our everyday vernacular but fit well into the category of alphabetical vowel usage. Affectious and affectiously are little used variants of affectionate. Cameelious is word created in jest by Kipling to describe the lazy camel’s hump in his Just So Stories. Placentious, meaning pleasing, or disposed to please; complaisant or agreeable. Gravedinous lends itself to define drowsy or heavy-headed.
Better known words with this fun element include, in alphabetical order of course, abstemious(ly) abstentious(ly), acheilous, acheirous, adventitious(ly), annelidious, aerious, arteriousum, avenious, bacterious, cavernicolous, casious, hareiously, materious, parecious(ly), placentious, tragedious, uncomplimentary. This is just a sampling of the many words in this world which have the distinction of having all their vowels in order.
Perhaps these are not facts you will use in your everyday life, but they are fun little tidbits to know if you happen to be enamored with words. The dictionary can be a wonderful playground. I have great respect for words, their form and their function, I find great beauty in them.
*I perused the Internet while writing this, looking for words to add to my list and was dismayed to find many seemingly made up words or words slightly misspelled to fit the mold. There were hundreds of words to be found, but only dozens with definite definitions, so of course, only those definitively defined were used above. Definitely.
Crystal R.Cook
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In case you’ve ever wondered, and I doubt you have.
While trying to occupy myself with anything other than laundry, I let my mind begin to wander. It took me the better portion of the day to find it. It gets lost in the strangest of places, today I found it drinking coffee and pondering vowels. Why? Why not? Vowels are cool, and, if you don’t know it by now, I can be a little left of normal sometimes.
So the laundry lay unattended whilst I looked up words, using a prompt I recalled from somewhere asking what the longest letter in the English language was which used a singular vowel. My kind of interesting . . . My husband hasn’t any clean socks, yet somehow I still feel accomplished.
Now, after much consideration and counting, it seems the longest word in the English language with only one vowel is strengths which is made up of nine letters. In comparison to the word strengthlessness, which has sixteen letters, strength is relatively small. Though strengthlessness has three vowels, they are in fact the same vowel simply utilized thrice, thus making it a much longer word utilizing just one of the five vowels.
If you excuse Y from its part-time vowel work, the word glycyphyllin which is a photochemical compound, has a singular vowel as well and consists of twelve letters.
There are a plethora of words which utilize just one vowel, not too hard to come by at all, so far, I’ve made use of seventy-six such words not counting those appearing more than once. Eighty-one when you consider *a* and *I* are actual words themselves, minuscule in comparison to the twenty letter word Chrononhotonthologos. Like strengthlessness, it contains the same vowel more than once, but only one vowel nonetheless.
The larger the words the harder they are to find, but there are more than a few with the same vowel used in repetition, technically they do utilize only one of the chosen few we call vowels, a, e, i, o, u . . . and sometimes y.
Succubus (three – u) has eight letters.
Screeched, (three – e), mundungus (three- u), beekeeper (five – e) these words have nine letters in each.
Asarabacca (five – a), oconomowoc (five – o), numbskulls (two – u), untruthful (three -u), dumbstruck (two – u), decrescence (four – e), nebelwerfer (four – e) and telemetered (five – e) each have eleven letters.
Taramasalata (six – a) is comprised of twelve letters.
Effervescence (five – e) is a good example with thirteen letters. Handcraftsman (three – a ), Mississippi (four – i), disinhibiting (five – i), whipstitching (three – i), kinnikinnicks (four – i) primitivistic (five – i), Philistinisms (four – i) have thirteen as well.
Instinctivistic (five – i) and defenselessness (five – e) have fifteen letters respectively.
Coming in at twenty letters is Chrononhotonthologos (seven – o), a satirical play by the English poet and songwriter Henry Carey from 1734.
While each of these words obviously contain more than one vowel, they do have the distinction of having the same vowel throughout, so depending on your criteria, the longest word in the English language (I have so far found) with only one vowel is either strengths or Chrononhotonthologos.
*Yes, they are all real words.
Crystal R. Cook
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This stinks.
I want to thank, and by thank I mean throttle, the geniuses behind the science that says second-hand flatulence is good for our health.
The men, it had to be men, behind this insidious study of smell should be flogged. I have no information regarding the validity of these claims or how accurate the reporting of them was, but the damage has been done.
When they invent charcoal bed sheets I’ll be first in line. I need softly spun cotton with odor absorbent fibers woven into a smooth, 600 thread count layer of protection so I can sleep without fear of awaking in the night to a fog of funk.
Was this brilliant breakthrough really something we needed to know? Will it be of benefit to mankind? Well, I suppose it already is, but what about womankind?
I am a fragile flower with a sensitive sniffer for goodness sake. I am the lone female in a house with four men, this does not bode well for me, it doesn’t smell all that great either.
At this rate, my heart will remain strong and I will be disease free for-fricking-ever. My mental well-being however, was already in question before this news . . . broke
Thank you science folk, thank you very, effing, much.
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Syllables change things.
The way you speak is important. How you say something matters. For instance:
Son: Hey Mommy, I was was watching this whore episode of that show and . . .
Me: (interrupting) What were you watching?!
— If you know my son, you know he has a moral compass bigger than than the Washington Monument, he detests anything indecent —
Son: I was watching this whore episode on . . .
Me: (again interrupting) Whore?
Son: Yeah. Whore. You know, it was supposed to be scary.
Me: Ahh, horror.
Son: That’s what I said.
Me: No. No, you didn’t. Horror has TWO syllables my son. TWO.
Son: (turning a shade of pink) Gimme a break.
Enunciate my friends . . . enunciate.
**A little background regarding my name – My children are adults, well, the youngest is 17, but close enough. My kids call me Mommy. All four of them. My oldest boys, autistic and awesome, have never wanted to call me anything else and their sister and brother hung on right along with them. So, just in case you ever wondered . . .
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I’ve never cared for roller coasters.
I wrote what will follow this when my son was fifteen, it is a snapshot of a particular day in our lives – he is now twenty-two years old. There was a time I feared we would not make it this far together, I feared I might not be enough. There were days I was certain I wasn’t. I took each moment as it came, holding on to hope for the next and praying for the strength I so desperately needed.
It was suggested he be placed in a residential treatment home after his third in-patient hospitalization at the children’s psychiatric hospital. My heart broke at the thought. My heart has felt the shattering of despair many times over the years.
He was my second child, as perfect as his brother. I knew very early on that like his big brother, he was going to need some extra care. He began early intervention services at two for developmental delays. He began speech therapy at three because he was not learning to speak. He was provided with occupational and physical therapy to help his body assimilate to his surroundings, to try to help his sensory functions work with him rather than against him.
At three he was enrolled in a special needs preschool. At five he finally began to speak. In kindergarten they diagnosed him with ADHD and OCD, and he was very much both of those things, but there was more, something yet to be named.
By second grade he could no longer deal with the constant changes and expectations of a mainstream classroom and was moved to a special day class for what they called the emotionally disturbed kids, it was right across the hall from the regular special ed classroom.
This was the year of his first hospitalization. He was diagnosed with Bipolar Disorder and Autism by sixth grade, the same year he finally stopped soiling his pants. The medications they gave him helped . . . some. Middle school regressed him, it turned his world inside out, that was the year of his second hospitalization, the next year brought a third.
Done with doing it their way, I fought until he was placed in a special needs high school, the same one his older brother already attended, there he flourished educationally, but Bipolar is an insidious parasite we had to battle each and every day. We still do.
I look back on those years and remember how dark they often were, I remember wondering if we would ever come up for air. He has worked hard, he is an unbelievable young man. He no longer cycles as manically and as rapidly as he did in his youth, but he still has his many ups and downs. His life is not easy, navigating through the world with autism can be tricky enough without your own mind turning on you periodically in the process.
He amazes me. There is so much to his story, details I wish I could forget but know I mustn’t. I have to record them, hard as I know it will be. I want to share our journey so people will see the hope and the determination that can change a life when there are those who say it cannot be done.
There is always, always . . . hope.
This morning, before the sun began to shine he told me I ruined his life, and then he said he loved me.
When I thought he had calmed I said good morning to him, he said I purposely say things just to make him feel crazy, and then he said he loved me.
After he’d eaten his breakfast he told me it was my fault he is the way he is, and then he said he loved me.
He told me he’d rather be anywhere than here, and then he said he loved me.
This morning, before my day had a chance to begin he told me he never should have been born, and then he said he loved me.
This afternoon he threw a fork at his brother and then helped him clean his room. He screamed and he yelled. He cursed and he sobbed. He raged and he rested. He threw his shoes at me and then he asked for ice cream.
He had a fit of laughter followed by a slamming door. He said he was going to ride his bike off a broken ramp down the road, it’s dangerous I say, he replies, I can do it, I won’t get hurt, nothing can hurt me. I prayed for angels to keep close watch as he walked out the door.
Tonight he hugged me, and then he said he loved me. He said his prayers and he closed his eyes. As I walked from the room he said, “Mommy, today was a good day wasn’t it? I smiled through my tears and said “Yes. Yes it was little man.”
I never know what tomorrow will bring. Some days I don’t know what the next minute will bring. My fifteen year old son is bipolar. He cycles rapidly, the roller coaster that is his life never ends, it slows every now and again, but never does it stop. I hold his hand as we ride up and down and back again. Sometimes I want off. I want to plant both feet back on the ground but I can’t let him ride alone, I won’t let him ride alone.
He has mood swings and he rages. He is happy and he is tormented. He sees things and hears things that aren’t real. When he is happy he jokes and laughs and tells me he loves me half a dozen times each hour and I feel like I am walking on air, but I don’t know if that same boy will walk through the door after school. Will he hate me? Will he hide somewhere and stick safety pins into his fingers? Will he throw things at us or will he be able to smile still? I don’t know. I never know.
He is such a great kid, so beautifully and perfectly great. He has the sweetest smile and his laughter can melt hearts. I close my eyes each night in prayer and I open them each new morn with hope. I try not to think of what the future will bring, I just want to get him safely to tomorrow. Some days are better than others.
I do what the doctors say; I try what the therapists say to try. I grow weary, I do, but one day I know I will rest, one day I know he will as well. I have hope and I have faith and I have a son I love more than anything else. He is a good boy.
An angel with a broken wing, learning how to fly . . .
Crystal R. Cook
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Why?
Shoebox Memory on a Post-It
So my son licked a bar of soap. I know, kids do weird things, it’s to be expected I suppose. He immediately began rubbing his tongue on his shirt and proceeded to lap up water from the faucet like you would from a garden hose.
His younger brother, who by the way has never licked soap, asked him why on earth he would ever want to do such a strange thing.
His reply, which he seemed to think should be sufficient to leave any lingering curiosities quelled was this –
“I had questions, I needed answers.”
I see. Carry on. The boy needed answers.
Oh, did I mention he is 16? Yeah . . . There’s that.
He is now 22 . . . Yesterday he placed his hand on the ceramic burner to see if it was hot. Again. I guarantee it will not be the last time he does so.
The Qwiet Muse 