Mama Bear

The feeling of milk flowing through my breasts always makes my toes tingle and my cheeks go flush. There’s no better away for a mother to get exercise then strapping the wee one in a snugly, baby heroin and fresh air. Each morning for the last three weeks I have been strapping Gus to my chest and heading out the door. The baby fat that has accumulated over my body clings to my hips and thighs like bubble gum stuck to the soul of a sneaker in a mid August heat wave. The leaves on are just starting to brake free of their buds like butterflies bursting out of their chrysalises and blessing the world with their myriad of colors. The world seemed so alive as if spring gave us all reason to breathe a little deeper. Bathing our spirits, takes us out of winter, showing us that there is a end to the darkness.

I lower my head and kiss my sleeping sons cheek. My heart swells as I think of all the years of head filled with love and laughter. I pick up the pace as I also think of all the years of chasing behind him and trying to keep him out of harms way. I entertain myself as I walk along on thoughts of heroic acts of undying motherly love. How I would morph into a momma bear and strike down any harm with one mighty swoop, protecting my offspring at any cost, sacrificing my life to save his.

My quaint neighbourhood with its song birds in the trees and budding shrubs and lily-white crocuses quickly transcend as I turned the corner onto Charles Street. It was like all the colour of spring had suddenly been fused with muddied greys browns except for the ruby red flashing lights of the emergency vehicles and the electric yellow tape that now cut through these quite streets. Deeply wounding my sense of tranquility and shaking me back in to city life. My arms cross over my infant Gus as if to shield him from the shadow of human existence. Old cracks in my heart start to tear open; my eyes blink violently as if to wash away the what my baby laden mind can not fathom.

“Oh my god, oh my god,” I shake my head "I don’t understand,” hold my son closer and try to envelope him into my very being. “Oh my god, how?” I say aloud.

There in the back seat of the squad car alone sat a women—no a girl. A child herself, blank expression on her face, eyes as wide as a pool of unknown pain.

My heart goes to her, but my mind is quick like a snake spring for behind jagged rocks ready to judge. My heart reaches out to her there is less that separates her form me, than the thin glass of the police car. I look down on the boulevard there on the fresh spring grass a black coroner’s blanket with the silhouette of a child beneath.

Why did it happen, who’s to blame? What turns a momma bear in to a monster? What can acts like this teach us; can we ever really know?

At home with both my children tucked away behind closed doors I stand staring out the window at my own reflection. How vulnerable we all are to our seas of emotions that swirl and crash within us.

by Terri Bishop

New Works: Poems and essays

Bathers

Sisters in the bath,

turning into prunes,

playing.

Imagining scenarios,

Inventing futures and flights of fantasy

together.

Then a time of discomfort

the shock of one sister’s changing body

they accept separateness.

Unable to risk being close.

one in the shower,

filling up the bath for the other.

Then one day tempted

the old toys call to her

she stays in the bath once again.

Now more hours of their childhood,

will be spent in wet fun

building their relationship

trust.

Helen Spaxman January 25, 2010

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Worst Dinner Ever

My husband, Gord, built a wonderful bench around two sides of our dining table. It allows us to serve birthday cake to 10 kids around a table that would normally sit four adults on chairs. All the same, Gord curses the day he came up with the idea.

We have two daughters, Christa, the elder sits nicely; she is eleven years old. She eats almost anything we place in front of her and often more than I do myself. Louise, six years old, refuses to eat most things; she continues to grow and have energy for school and running, dancing, singing and so on, but seems to live on air. And we worry about her inability to sit at the table.

If you put a jigsaw puzzle, art materials or even lined paper and pencil on the table, Louise will sit and concentrate. Ask any of her teachers. But once there is food, especially dinner, that bench becomes a stage for dancing, singing, “poetry”, yoga, gymnastics and any kind of monkey business she can come up with. Louise rarely sits on this bench at dinner time, preferring to squat, presumably to be able to get up at a moments notice.

Six years ago, Christa got an enormous glass from a hockey game; she wasn’t allowed to use it because she knocked it over a number of times. Last year Gord started using it; he does drink a lot of water at dinner time. Soon after, Louise started switching it with hers when he wasn’t looking and it became joke with them. Daddy would act like he didn’t know how it got moved. Even though we are tired of this joke, we have allowed it to continue if only to keep a positive mood at the table rather than a fight over what Louise refuses to eat.

One recent dinner, I had prepared nutty short grain rice, chopped and steamed kale and carrots with Bragg’s, thin ham steaks, home-cooked black beans, sometimes Louise eats these. The week before she had enjoyed these beans on toast at lunch. And always on the lookout for proteins that she will like, I hoped she would be tempted by the pink ham.

“I’m not eating THAT!” Louise pushed the plate away getting rather animated on the bench.

“Behave!” Daddy pointed his finger at her.

“I am being have.”

Daddy looked back at Louise. “Hey, what happened to my water? It shrunk!”

“I don’t know?” smirking.

Sensing her improved mood, I suggested, “Have a seat, Louise.”

She pulled a cushion over to sit on but instead squatted over it. Then, leaning across the table, she plucked a cherry tomato out of the big salad bowl knocking over her gigantic glass of water, dousing her dinner.

This should have been a tragedy and in the past had resulted in tears and me trading my dinner for her rinsed one. But with a goofy grin, Louise said, “I like soup.”

She stirred the water into her food, carefully separating out the ham, and ate her “soup” all up. My daughter is a ham but won’t eat it.

Helen Spaxman

January 28, 2010