I Know Everythong

*Note: After I posted the poem titled "I Know Everything," I was chatting, left-handed, with my brother while nursing Auralee. I told him to go check out the new poem I had posted, but I made a typing error. He was disappointed to find out the real title of the poem. So in his honor, I have written the poem he thought he was going to get to read.

I Know Everythong
My father was a boxer--
a not very good one--
girdled by bikini-clad women
trying to seduce him
and tank-top-clad men
trying to reduce him
to just a jock, strapped for cash.

My mother was a player--
a not very good one--
a fiddler with a g-string
always out of tune.

They married and moved
to a second-story flat
and she got a job
at the brassierie under where
they lived.

But their romance was brief.
It was difficult to tell
who wore the pant(ie)s in the family
(Of course, it's always something, I hear,
and it takes two to tanga.)

So he said, "farewell,"
and she said, "so long, John."
And that was when I was conceived.

So now you know everythong,
and boy, is it short!

I Know Everything

I know everything
not worth knowing.

Like the proper spelling of mackerel,
which is useless to me
because I will never write it.
Except once.
In this poem.

My brain cells are crammed with
phone numbers,
old math equations,
Beatles trivia,
one hundred "great thoughts"
Mr. Wetherell made me memorize in tenth grade.

If it's redundant, useless, and otherwise
completely irrelevant to daily life,
I'm bound to know it.

My husband (he says)
knows nothing that is
not worth knowing.

His brain cells are emptier.

He doesn't have to know, of course,
because if he wonders, he can always
ask me.

For instance,
"where are my shoes?"
"what does deleterious mean?"
"what's the name of that song?"
"how do you spell mackerel?"

(that's twice)

Maybe I think that if I hold tight
to the vestiges of life before motherhood
I will not lose myself completely.

Or maybe I think, if I remember enough details,
I will finally write a poem worth reading.

Well, it won't be this one.
M-A-C-K-E....

on cleaning and the different sexes

I’m getting ready to clean the bathroom, which for me is a complicated process. First I have to gather cleaning supplies, of which I have about two dozen. I have cleansers with and without bleach, cleansers with and without Lysol disinfectant, cleansers with and without ammonia, and cleansers with and without anything in them that actually cleans, but they smell good so... I have cleansers that remove soap scum and cleansers that remove hard water. Some of my cleansers are made for scrubbing without scratching, some are made for cleaning without scrubbing, and some are made for scratching without scrubbing or cleaning (I haven’t yet figured out where to use that, but I keep it on hand just in case.)

I have a different cleanser to clean every surface in the bathroom; the sink and the countertop on which the sink rests require two different cleansers (so as not to scratch the porcelain). The outside and the inside of the toilet, of course, require two different cleansers, and even the mirror requires a different cleanser than the chrome fixtures in the sink and shower. And speaking of the shower, I am eternally grateful that I don’t have glass doors, because that would definitely require a whole host of different cleansers that, if added to my ten-gallon bucket of cleansers, would make it too heavy to carry up the stairs.

In the other hand, I have materials to use with the cleansers--sponges, dust cloths, cleaning rags, dishcloths, paper towels, cleaning towels, scrub brushes, toilet brushes, latex gloves, plastic garbage bags, a broom and dustpan, a mop, and a toothbrush for scrubbing the grout between the tiles. By the time I have gathered up all of the supplies for cleaning the bathroom, I am out of time and energy to complete the job.

My mom taught me how to clean. She instilled in me the knowledge of which cleanser to use on which surface, as well as how to clean that surface properly. She was fastidious about cleaning, and I grew up thinking it was a sin to use windex to wipe down the toilet or comet to clean the bowl. Of course, I also thought that it was unhealthy to cut a sandwich on the diagonal so that you had two triangles instead of two rectangles, so I’m beginning to think that some of my mom’s tutelage was unintentional.

My husband, luckily, is helping me overcome this obsession with cleansers. When I finally lug all of my supplies up the stairs, I meet him coming out of the bathroom. “What are you doing?” he asks. “I’m going to clean the bathroom,” I say. “I just did it for you,” he reassures me. Looking at my heavily laden arms, I ask, with trepidation, “What did you use?”

“Hand soap,” he tells me cheerfully, and walks into the bedroom whistling tunelessly, obviously proud of himself for doing a job without being asked to. I am afraid that if I just go into the bathroom and inspect the job, I will have to go to confession afterward. But my mother’s compulsion gets the best of me and I know that no matter how good it looks, the bathroom mirror will not really be clean until I have sprayed it with Windex and wiped it down with paper towels.

Unfortunately, I am out of Windex. This is a catastrophe. I can’t use Comet, obviously, because the powder wouldn’t stick to a vertical surface and it would be horrible to try and rinse off. I try the cleansers in spray bottles one by one, but they all leave streaks, even with the two-ply, industrial strength paper towels on which you can wash grapes without breaking them. The toilet bowl cleanser and mopping solution are, of course, out of the question, as is the chrome cleanser and the cream cleanser I sometimes use for countertops. I could try a dusting cleanser, but the mirror is dusty, not dirty. I clean the rest of the bathroom carefully, hoping that, if everything else is spotless, the mirror will be able to wait until I can get to the store for Windex. But every time I turn around, I see toothpaste sprays, tweezed eyebrows, two-year-old fingerprints, and condensation drips. It cannot wait. I have to clean the mirror, even if it is the death of me. There is only one solution; I don’t like it, but it is the only way. I have to use the hand soap.

On Newborn Babies

I forgot how the smell of new life rises up in delicate spirals from their skin;
How when you wake them up, they stare at you with wonder painted on their faces.
I love to hold them as they stretch: back arched, eyes screwed close, arms over their heads and
knees drawn up to their chest. No one else can stretch like that.
I am not silly enough to think it will or want it to last forever,
But I forgot about the perfect miniature bones in their hands and fingers
And the first time they hold your gaze and smile back at you.

This baby--this call to motherhood--is the epic journey of my life.
And though it will probably never be realized in story or in song,
Being ordinary does not make it any less extraordinary
to me.

Sonnet for my husband (written 12/06)

You are spring rain falling on my parched earth
To soothe the ache that comes from my soul’s growth.
So you, with soft tones and with sweet caress
Bring solace to my heart, to my mind, rest.

You are the heat of summer. As the dusk
Exposes sunset tendrils of that fast
Descending fire, so your touch envelopes
Me. I breathe your heat. And then I know love.

When autumn comes, with winter close behind,
And our full years are playing out their time,
You are the colors—dappled, rich, and deep—
That fill life’s canvas; you interpret me.

So our love is not bound by years or times;
We’ve trussed our souls to new eternities.

when a baby is born

You're pushing--or trying not to push but just let your body do the pushing for you--and there's this moment where you know, if you just bear down and push through everything (through the pain and the pressure and the stretching and the burning and the bizarre way you can feel your baby's head descending through the birth canal and making a break for it), you will push the baby out and you will be done. So you push, even though you're supposed to just pant or something and let your body push so that you don't tear, but the last time you did that, she crowned and then went back inside, and that is NOT going to happen again. So you push, and it burns, and you think you're going to tear apart, but then, after the pressure is so great you wonder how the universe can still be in one piece, her head slips out and her body after it and all the pain is gone, instantly, like it never happened, like the whole twelve hours of everything you've just been through was only a dream--no, not even a dream, it was someone else's dream and they told you about it and for half an instant, you believed in it, but no, it was only a dream. So you push through to that moment and then it's over and they drape the baby over your naked stomach and chest. She's howling and sliding around on you because they didn't even wipe her off much first, and she feels so warm that you don't ever want them to take her off of you. And you look at her eyes shut tightly against the light and her mouth open wide in a loud protest of being born and her little hands, curling into fists like they're trying to grab a hold on you to push themselves back in and in that moment, you are irrevocably bound to this tiny life for the rest of eternity.

on giving birth to Auralee

TRANSITION
"try to ride the contraction
like a wave,"
my midwife intones, but I
have never surfed before

so when I feel it coming, I try
to swim out to it,
to roll over in my mind
and let it carry me along

when that doesn't work, I try
to let it wash over me--
that should be soothing--
but it doesn't

In theory, I know how to relax,
how to embrace the contraction,
how to interpret the pain as pressure

but when it comes, I am never,
somehow,
ready for it

and instead of relaxing, all I do is try
to hold still;
some part of my body always gives me away:
a curled toe or a clenched fist

and this is not pressure
this is hell
this is worse than hell because
if it were hell, I would be dead,
and I don't think dead people feel pain

And when it's over, I lay there,
gasping for breath,
and unable to hold still
(although everyone says I am not shaking)

what do they know?
I have already learned that,
when the next one comes,
no one will be there with me.