hip Mama the parenting zine

Welcome to the Garden

The cards kept telling me to plant a garden. The planets aligned in such a way that the year before was one of great loss and instability. I was drowning really, pushing the water out from in front of my face as fast as my arms could move, kicking my legs and feet and pushing to the top, to the light, but getting no where. Plant a garden? I mean, I've considered it. I like the idea of it, but it wasn't a long-forgotten dream or anything. Yet every time my sister did my tarot reading, it came up....something about planting a garden. It took a while to finally break through that the garden was Deenie's.

I started the story years ago. A piece of it fell into my lap in conversation. There was something about her, about Deenie, that I knew. I saw myself in her, and later, I saw my mother, and my grandmother, and her mother. As I've gotten older, one thing that I understand better than ever is that I am not as "special" as I might have once thought. My experiences, insights, fears, dark thoughts, are not so unusual, and I am more like, and more connected to all of those women, to all women, than I realized.

But writing it all down means digging into earth that's been frozen over for decades, and it scared me. And allowing others to read it, in a zine, and now in a blog, well that really scares me. But Pema Chodron, from the 2 dollar book I got at Goodwill told me that to stay in my little bubble out of fear isn't keeping me safe, it's keeping me suffering. Living is getting out of that bubble and learning to stay open-hearted even when it's scary and everything falls apart and all the children laugh at you. And I can't forget the wise words of my dearest friend and mentor, poet Amy Sutton, writer of the fantastic Tabloids, "Just get your pansy ass in gear and do the damn writing."

So I've decided to abandon the fear and embrace the honesty, with whatever that brings. I'm bringing out the hoe, the garden rake, the shovels, and here I am, in my own kind of garden, in a zen garden, in Deenie's garden. And there's a lot of work to do.

hip Mama the parenting zine

November 23, 2009, 5:55 am
Filed under: Uncategorized

Presents…a reading by local writers Deesha Philyaw, Christina Springer, Melissa Sokulski, Kelli Stevens Kane, and Robin Monroe, along with Amanda Gilby, Hip Mama short fiction contest winner, reading “Blue Gardenia” featured in Issue 44:The Creativity Issue

This latest issue honors and celebrates musicians, writers, and artists who can nurture their kids and their art.
Let’s get together hip Mamas! We want to hear from you!

Friday December 4th 7pm

Rebellious Nature Radical T-Shirt & Fair-Trade Gift Shop & Art Gallery

Located At the Corner of Penn Ave and N.Graham St.
-Side Entrance at 104 N.Graham Street-

for more information check out:

http://www.rebelliousnature.com/

http://friendship-pgh.org/paai/unblurred/

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I am not a mama, but i read your story in Hip Mama anyway.
There is a woman, Melba, who is my grandmother, and she takes a lot of shit from my immediate family for past actions and words. I go through periods where I call her once a week, and sometimes I say I will visit and I never call. It is because of other peoples opinions of her, and sometimes because she is a broken record of the bad memories and family gossip. I think it is because she is so sad that she says what ever comes to mind to keep from feeling anything real. My dad, her son, committed suicide. What you wrote about Deenie, made me think of her. The lines about not visiting your grandmother because you are too busy, or because “we”, and I will substitute I, cannot get over her eccentricities, made me cry into my bowl of rice not five minutes ago. Thanks for your words. I do not know if they will permanently change my attitude towards her, but they did for these few moments. I will call her.

Comment by emily February 16, 2010 @ 9:14 pm

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