wounds can become wind chimes

we all have a backstory - here is a bit of mine

This is the 12-year anniversary when I became an orphan. My father passed away in 1996 and my mom followed him across the veil in 2011.

I had a very complicated relationship with my parents. Well, maybe it wasn’t that complicated - despite how much I knew they loved me - I was always a bit of an alien to them. My dad was a hardworking pharmacist running our 100-year-old family drugstore that he had inherited from his father, who in turn had inherited from his father. My mother was a former no-nonsense Elementary School teacher who (despite being very slight in stature) was as intimidating as any person I have ever met. They didn’t know what to do with me and my often melodramatic heart who took academics as seriously as a cone of cotton candy running for president. I was living my life on a separate frequency than my parents were.

My parents were the two most pragmatic and responsible people that ever walked this Earth…where I was created to be…well, more of a dreamer who lived without worrying about the consequences of tomorrow.

Our relationship had a life cycle that looked like this:

1. I would screw up

2. They would worry and fret - which would often involve some yelling and crying on all of our parts.

3. I would finally understand what they were trying to get me to know about being a functional human on this planet.

4. I would get my act together for a bit.

5. And then I would screw up and the cycle would start over again.

They both passed away before I fell into my purpose as a poet and writer. They never saw this incarnation of myself. They both only got to know me as a hot mess. I know they loved me and yet, I know they were both very disappointed in the person I was.

A good chunk of my poetry is probably my attempt to write to my folks wherever they are now. I so want them to see me as the butterfly that eventually struggled his way out of the chrysalis. My mom and dad only knew me at my worst - and didn’t live long enough to see my winter thaw. I think that is why I pour so much of my heart into these pieces that I write. I imagine that the more intense my creation is - the more energy these words have to find their way to whatever comet my parents are currently riding side saddle on.

I recognize that science on all of that probably doesn’t check out. :)

A lot of poets I have bumped into have really interesting backstories. Maybe they had some sort of amazing event at a crossroads in their life where suddenly the words started to pour out of their fingers like sunbeams as unicorns danced around them.

For most of my unfolding writing journey, I never thought I had one of those inciting moments that I could look back at as the moment where the poetry in me first started to stir. I subscribed to the idea that this happened all at once like a thunderclap in the Gulf of Mexico. As if poetry just showed up at my announced door one day.

However, with some reflection, it turns out that this version of myself had been in the slow cooker for longer than I had previously considered.

I actually have a backstory. I do have a moment at the crossroads. The journey into the uncharted space in my heart started nearly 20-years ago.

Memory is a funny thing. I had buried this particular event in my life like it was something to be ashamed of. I think I didn’t want anyone to think I was losing my mind. Turns out, that I wasn’t born with much of a mind in the first place -so, what in the hell was I worried about?!

So, in tribute to my late parents who never got to be fully introduced to the person I have become, the following poem is a slice of backstory cake. It’s about an event that took place around 19 years before I ever wrote my first poem but started the tectonic plates in my heart to start to shift.

For mom and dad: