snowsparkle wild-write 2-2-06
Leave your house naked
don't pause at the door
there is no hesitation when
skin wants the sky
My son and i shared a short-lived new year's tradition. When i turned 50 a couple years ago, it felt like instant permission to do things i'd never done before. On that new year's day, when my son and i saw the rain dancing on the wooden deck in our backyard, we tore off our clothes and joined in the dance. I tell you, the feeling was unexpected. The heat of my body floated outward to greet the cool rain. Body, hair and breath caught the scents: fresh, wet, morning. We danced, feet and arms flailing like some crazed vaudvillean dream. Our laughter frightened the cats and my husband. Then, falling back into the house through the open door, we wanted nothing but the whole day to carry this peace, this reckless peace, armloads of "yes you may's."
This new year, my teenage son couldn't find a way for it to be ok to dance naked in the dawn with his mom. So we danced our separate dances with less joy, less exhuberance, less recklessness. It seemed the faintest wisp of what it had been before. Still, it was something.
Being in the writing space and wild writing with all these women sometimes feels like leaving the house naked. Self-acceptance and the way things are held lightly invite me to walk the walk of naked words. Lift things up to the light, never mind the sagging breasts and jowls.
don't pause at the door
there is no hesitation when
skin wants the sky
My son and i shared a short-lived new year's tradition. When i turned 50 a couple years ago, it felt like instant permission to do things i'd never done before. On that new year's day, when my son and i saw the rain dancing on the wooden deck in our backyard, we tore off our clothes and joined in the dance. I tell you, the feeling was unexpected. The heat of my body floated outward to greet the cool rain. Body, hair and breath caught the scents: fresh, wet, morning. We danced, feet and arms flailing like some crazed vaudvillean dream. Our laughter frightened the cats and my husband. Then, falling back into the house through the open door, we wanted nothing but the whole day to carry this peace, this reckless peace, armloads of "yes you may's."
This new year, my teenage son couldn't find a way for it to be ok to dance naked in the dawn with his mom. So we danced our separate dances with less joy, less exhuberance, less recklessness. It seemed the faintest wisp of what it had been before. Still, it was something.
Being in the writing space and wild writing with all these women sometimes feels like leaving the house naked. Self-acceptance and the way things are held lightly invite me to walk the walk of naked words. Lift things up to the light, never mind the sagging breasts and jowls.
posted by snowsparkle at
2/05/2006 07:27:00 AM
4 Comments:
The first year I went to the Michigan Women's Music Festival I danced in the rain with a thousand women completely free of clothes. It was the most liberating moment of my life
By
GoGo, at 2/19/2006 4:31 AM
Well put!! I like how you thread the image with your feelings --sharing subtly the naked truth...the freedom of expression is sometimes drop by drop for many people. I love how you run out nake in the rain, it is a freeing example. Thank you!
By
Tongue in Cheek Antiques, at 3/05/2006 11:25 PM
This is so reminiscent of the teenager that I lived with for 4 years.
When I first met her, she was 12 and sweet and sort of broken by the onset of adolescence. She welcomed the vibrance I brought, the unchained laughter, the soaring hopes and dreams, the midnight dancing to bjork in the living room in our bikinis after a moonlight swim in the ocean.
But within 6 months, she had changed so remarkably, that the small shy girl has already morphed into a small, smart, vixen-in-bloom.
She never again welcomed me. I was hers to rebel against.
And when I think about it now, I'm glad I was there to serve that purpose in her life. It's more important than almost anything else for a teenager.
To establish a sense of who they are apart from the people they love and who love them.
By
Josephine, at 3/07/2006 9:56 AM
michelle, gogo, tica and josephine.... i'm sorry, i guess i spaced out about responding to comments on this blog as i don't show up here too often. thank you all for your sharing your experiences... and josephine, it was especially great to hear yours as it gives me a way to be less undone by the distance my son is creating. although i understand it from an intellectual standpoint.... the needing to establish himself as separate; owning his own power.... it's still hard to accept it from an emotional standpoint. that young girl was very lucky to have you in her life.
By
snowsparkle, at 3/09/2006 11:13 AM
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