November 11: My Son's Anger, Jennifer Reeser, "Compass Rose"

Jennifer Reeser has a poem about devotion to a child.  The impulse every parent feels to surround his/her baby with all that's good.  Warmth and blankets and sunlight.  Pumpkin seeds and lullabies.  It sort of breaks my heart:

Compass Rose

by:  Jennifer Reeser

I’d buy you a Babushka doll, my heart,
and brush your ash-blonde hair until it gleams,
were Russia and our land not laid apart
by ocean so much deeper than it seems.

I have an oval pin, though -- glossy lacquer
hand-made in Moscow, after glasnost came,
with fine, deft roses on a background blacker
perhaps, than history’s collective shame.

I’ve done my best to compass you with roses:
the tablecloth, the walls, the pillowcase,
the western side-yard only dusk discloses
briefly, in Climbing Blaze and Queen Anne’s lace.

May they suffice for peace when you discover
your love is not enough to turn the earth.
I dream I saw a handful of them hover
against my pane the morning of your birth.


I find myself in a difficult position right now.  My son is having some problems.  He has ADHD and has been on medication for it since the first grade.  Recently, he's been having outbursts at home and school.  Violent, angry outbursts.  At parent teach conferences this week, his teacher said that his anger is "scary" sometimes. 

My wife and I took him to the pediatrician for a flu shot yesterday, and we talked about his anger.  The pediatrician wrote a prescription for an additional medication.  The only problem is that it might really change his personality.  Make him tired all the time.  Sedated.  There's no way to know how it will work for him until we try it.

I don't want to make him take another medication, even though I know he needs it.  When he has one of his anger episodes, there's no controlling him.  He needs help.  But I also don't want to lose my smart little guy.  The one who got up early this morning because he misses me when I'm at work.  The one who stands in front of the TV and does a "butt dance" after his bath, shaking his rear in an eight-year-old version of a twerk.  The one who says grace before he eats a Milky Way. 

Saint Marty is saying a few prayers for his son tonight, that he won't ever forget to shake his behind when the mood hits him.

September 12: Nice and Peaceful, Happy Places, Piece of Mind

That's the whole trouble.  You can't ever find a place that's nice and peaceful, because there isn't any.  You may think there is, but once you get there, when you're not looking, somebody'll sneak up and write "Fuck you" right under your nose...

When I started flipping through my copy of Catcher, looking for a passage that captured my mood this evening, I held little hope.  My state of mind is so foul and negative that I thought Holden Caulfield, even in his most desperate and depressed moments, couldn't describe my feelings.  Then I happened upon the little passage above, and saw that it was good (yes, I'm stealing from the Book of Genesis).

I have a few happy places in my life, places where I always have a sense of self-worth, safety, and value.  When I teach, I feel that in the classroom.  When I help my daughter with her homework or give my son a bath or make dinner for my wife, I feel that in my home.  When I participate in a worship service or sing in the choir or plan an event, I feel felt that in church.  That's right, I scratched out the present tense because, right now, church is not one of my happy places.  It's like Holden says.  Someone sneaked up when I wasn't looking and scratched "Fuck you" on the altar.

That sounds harsh, I know.  I'm dealing with some anger issues.  I've worked for the church for close to 15 years as an organist and worship leader.  I loved every second of it.  The songs, concerts, cantatas, plays, writing workshops, children's Christmas programs.  However, after yesterday's news that the church is eliminating my salaried position, I'm currently feeling betrayed, devalued, insulted.  I'm a used Kleenex.  I was useful for a while, but now I'm a ball of tissue crusted with snot.

I'm looking for peace of mind for my piece of mind tonight.  I want to be calm and happy again.  I've been trying to get there all day long.  It's not happening.  Until I sat down at my laptop this evening to blog, I don't think I've had a single positive thought.  I just realized something, though.  Typing my posts makes me happy.  In some weird way, when I'm blogging, I feel connected and safe with people who care about me.  And I don't even know them.

There, I've found happiness.  It may be fleeting.  It may only last as long as my laptop screen is glowing in my dark office at the university.  It may be a complete fabrication of my currently chaotic mind.  But that's what happiness is, I think.  It's whatever you want it to be.  A blog post.  A can of Diet Coke.  A little girl chewing gum loudly.  A rainstorm on a September evening.

That's a piece/peace of Saint Marty's mind.

Anyone need a tissue?