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Top Ten Things that I Love about Spring!
On March 29, 2015 by Speranza 1.The first day that I can smell that sweet, clean smell of earth mixed with rain or the scent from freshly washed laundry flapping hopefully away on the line. 2. Slim, cigar shaped goldfish moving extra slowly in my backyard pond, casually negotiating the remaining slivers of ice like skilled sub-mariners. (WHAT THIS MEANS
Being A Girl . Being A Mum . Introspection . Uncategorized
Sometimes I’d Like the Cream
On March 24, 2015 by Speranza
I’ve been paying more attention lately to my female co-workers, friends and families and the way they talk and deal with the men in their lives and it is completely fascinating to me how men are still being revered and pacified (I use this word intentionally) so automatically and unconsciously. It’s been absorbed into our psyche and our culture to keep them on the content side of things.
(Or maybe it’s just anything for a quiet life since so many men are renowned for their tiny sense of tolerance and their quickness to unnecessary anger.)
Which has obviously worked for them during their tiny childhoods.
Gay Husbands . Grey Divorce . Love
Brief History of Toxic Nostalgia
On March 22, 2015 by Speranza
I often recall a line from a truly great poem called ‘Liar’ by Lynne Crosbie in which she notes that ‘expectation is synonymous with the worst arrogance.’
This is something I often think of when I recall my innocent, totally secure, married self.
I assumed that my long term, contented happiness was static – I expected it. I’m still ashamed, embarrassed; but don’t all people who are in love feel that way and especially when that love has expanded and grown even stronger over the years? I do see now that it really was a kind of arrogance and unfortunately I can never think this way again or feel so safe.
And safe is the perfect word.
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Sentimental Fool
On March 14, 2015 by Speranza
I’m a very sentimental person.
All manner of things both happy and profoundly sad can reduce me to tears at a moment’s notice from a song (“Over the Rainbow” should come with a warning, there I said it) to the open, earnest expression on a dog’s woolly face as he waits outside a café for his master. I can only do news in eyedropper amounts because how else can we tolerate another day trying to make sense of anything unless we are once again seduced by denial? (Thank you Ernest Becker). Sometimes life feels so overwhelming I feel the weight crushing my heart down as though someone has their boot upon it.
And I absolutely don’t consider this a need for help or a neurosis – it’s natural to feel this way when one really, truly sees the big picture and acknowledges the absolute anguish that is all around us.
When ‘Frasier’ was very young, we would often take long walks – specifically designed to tire him out if he only knew – and on one such occasion I happened to stoop and admire the pink granite in someone’s driveway, showing him how the veins of grey and silver sparkled as I turned the stone back and forth in my fingers. From that moment on, each and every time we went walking, Frasier made it his duty to seek out a nugget of pale, pink granite, charging back to present it to me with proud, excited eyes. (Which explains why, twenty four years later I still have a spaghetti jar filled to the top with thumb nail sized nuggets of pink granite.)