Like They Do

His response flew out of his mouth like a reflex, 

so swiftly that it was obvious he hadn’t had time to think. 

He made a clumsy attempt to recover,

like men do,

but it was too late. 

The rogue words had already been launched and the futile subsequent statement, 

meant to intercept the first, 

didn’t bring them back. 

He pretends the words were benign, invisible and silent, hoping she hadn’t noticed, 

but clearly she had. 

She wants to pretend too, but doesn’t know how because she, 

like women do, 

sometimes thinks too much. 

So now they’re stuck. 

Minutes pass. 

He has already forgotten his words, 

like men do, 

and does not know why her eyes are sad. 

She, 

like women do, 

knows she has extraneously extrapolated his seemingly meaningless words into malintent, 

but doesn’t know how to let them go.

Because,

she thinks,

perhaps the words had more meaning than he thought, having been fired from his gut they way they were. 

You can follow me on Twitter: @CeceliaHalbert

Excuses

Wow. It’s been a really long time since my last blog post. 

On Christmas Eve, I started to write a Christmas Eve poem as I’ve done in previous years, but then family showed up and I decided to pay attention to them instead. The poem I started to write wasn’t anything different than the previous two anyway, so there wasn’t much point.

Days go by and I frequently think to myself that I need to write but then I don’t and for the same reason. I’m busy paying attention to the important people in my life. 

Oh sure, you say, "You have to MAKE time to write."

And if you’re saying that right now, I say, “Fuck you, I’ll write when I want to.”  (The words ‘write’ and ‘exercise’ are interchangeable in that sentence, by the way.”)

A couple of years ago I was writing a novel. And a full-length play. And a bunch of little plays. And blog posts. And sonnets. 

Know why? I had nothing else to do and so I was trying to manufacture a life. 

Now it seems I actually have a life. I still write here and there… a song, a poem. 

And at the moment, a blog post. 

When life doesn’t make sense, writing is an excellent way to organize and categorize the chaos. 

At the moment I’m happy for the current lack of chaos, and therefore happy to be living more than writing. 

               Dammit. I just remembered how good it felt to write.











You can follow me on Twitter: 
@CeceliaHalbert

The Scarf

I can write about this now because, as is the case with me frequently, I couldn't keep my big mouth shut and the cat, or rather the scarf in this case, is out of the bag - or in this case, the closet, and by closet, I mean the one where I was hiding it when he was around because it was supposed to be a present. It's a gender-neutral scarf.

The Scarf  was knitted with seven different colors of yarn. It is 800 rows long by 36 stitches wide, which makes it a little over 15 feet long and 12 inches wide or 15 square feet of scarf.

Not counting the tassels. The tassels add almost another foot of length.

I hadn't knitted for years, but I like to knit and residing somewhere in the deep recesses of my mind were some tiny fragments of rudimentary knowledge about Doctor Who and a colorful scarf so I did some Googling, as they say, and learned that in Season 12, the fourth Doctor, the Tom Baker Doctor, did indeed have a scarf. Through my extensive research (a.k.a. Googling), I also learned that The Scarf  had been studied thoroughly by knitters/Doctor Who aficionados and that exact patterns of The Scarf are available online by way of these aforementioned scarf experts.

The man I love happens to be a fan of the Doctor, so I figured a replica of The Scarf would make a nice gift.

I didn't realize what knitting The Scarf would do for me.

First of all, I remembered how to knit and in doing so, I remembered my grandmother teaching me how to knit, which is one of the only really heartwarming memories I have about my grandmother, who was not the most nurturing of women.

Secondly, knitting - creating fabric one stitch at a time is simultaneously mindless and mindful. The Scarf is knitted in garter stitch, which is just knit stitch after knit stitch for 800 rows. The only exciting break in the action is the changing of colors. It's kind of like a long road trip in which the distance to the destination is reduced by each city and landmark passed along the way. Only twelve more miles to Jefferson City and Jefferson City is halfway to Enid = only four more rows until the three rows of purple and that's halfway to the end of the scarf!

Knit stitch, knit stitch, knit stitch....  I can almost do it without looking. ALMOST. But I have to look. I have to watch every stitch in order not to make a mistake and leave a hole somewhere along the way. Mindless and mindful. Zen. There are mistakes though. I left them there as a reminder that I am not perfect.

As if anyone needs a reminder of that.

And lastly, knitting brings me peace and contentment. My hands are not idle when I knit and I can see measurable progress. Like banjo music, it's impossible to think of anything bad when I'm knitting and when I'm knitting for someone I love, I put that love into each stitch, every single time the loop moves from the left needle to the right. I wonder if he who wears The Scarf will be able to feel that love.

I'm on to other knitting for other people I love. I rarely keep anything I knit.

So I finished The Scarf, but I haven't stopped knitting.

I just had to pause long enough to write about it.



You can follow me on Twitter: @CeceliaHalbert

How Do You Know He's the One?

The easy answer is….   you don’t.

That’s what I told my daughter. You don’t know. There isn’t a litmus test.  All you have to go on is your gut feeling and there’s no guarantee, in the long run, that you’ll be right. 

If, however, you’re in the throes of that new, head-over-heels infatuation that masquerades as love and you find that even the most minuscule, seemingly innocuous tiny little things about him annoy the crap out of you already, then I caution you: DO NOT PROCEED. You and he are doomed to eventual failure. He is not the one if, in this glowing state of love-struck rosiness, you don’t find every single quality about him absolutely adorable, right down to the gas that escapes his body in what might otherwise be considered auditorily or olfactorily offensive ways.

I speak from experience. 

I know how difficult it is in that trance-like, intoxicated-by-endorphins phase of a relationship, to envision how years upon years of living under the same roof with that person might magnify to a horrific degree those seemingly minor and perhaps petty irritants. But I tell you - those tiny little annoyances will fester and aggravate you to such a point that one day, while watching him sleep in the Barcolounger in his underwear in front of an ancient episode of Who’s the Boss, his chest and belly littered with crumbled remnants of the contents of a can of Pringles, you will contemplate forever surrendering yourself to a convent of cloistered sisters just so you will never have to lay eyes on him again.

HOWEVER, 

If you find every single characteristic of this man that you profess to love to be uniquely ambrosial and captivating AND if this man feels the same way about you….   then there is hope. 

You’re also probably on the right track if he’s happy that your team won because 1 - it makes you happy (even if he hates your team) and 2 - because he believes that any baseball is better than no baseball.

He’s something special if he does what he says he’s going to to do and if he’s there when he says he’s going to be there.

And lastly - if his arms feel more like home than anywhere you’ve ever been, then they probably are. 


You can follow me on Twitter:  @CeceliaHalbert

Beautiful Death

Leaves on the trees have started to turn and the sun is lower in the sky at midday, casting a creepy sundowning glow in the early afternoon. I’d like to say I have a love-hate relationship with this time of year, but it’s mostly hate.

The bright side? For a week or two, I won’t have to turn on the furnace or the air-conditioner.

That’s about it, really. I despise the dark and the cold. I don’t even really like the magnificent colors of autumn. I’d rather be surrounded by the lush humid green of July and August than the sparse goldens and reds that are the harbingers of the the perpetual uncomfortableness of winter. 

Only four games are left in baseball’s regular season and next year’s reporting date for pitchers and catchers has yet to be determined.

Sigh.

September is almost over, yet I’m still wearing my flip-flops, hoping against hope that global warming will somehow turn Chicago into Los Angeles (albeit with a much better skyline and fewer earthquakes) and I will never have to shovel snow off of my driveway again. 

Wishful thinking. 

And also selfish thinking. Global warming of that magnitude would only benefit my little corner of the world, so I’m retracting that wish just in case there’s a magic genie reading my blog.

However, in the off-chance that such a genie is listening, I’d like to put in a request for some intestinal fortitude to appear on my doorstep in the form of cases of red wine. 

It's almost October and only four games remain, but my team is guaranteed post-season play so I have that one shred of summer left and I’m clinging to every last frayed remnant with one hand and strangling the neck of a wine bottle with my other.

What I Know

An “Aha!” moment.

The light bulb goes on.

Epiphany.

It’s not you. It’s me.

But it’s not what you think. 

I have no problem saying “I love you.” 

And I mean it when I say it.

The problem for me has always been the “being loved” part.  Aha.

I remember telling him early on that it probably wouldn’t last. I would probably do something to piss him off and then he’d be gone. That’s what I’d come to expect because that is what has always happened.

But he’s not gone. I think this time it’s different. I think this time I can get it right and here’s why:

This man knows how to do love.. He did it before. For forty years. He still loves her and he always will.

But now he loves me too and that’s a big deal, given that in the beginning of us he didn’t know if that was possible.

I’ve watched his love for me grow into what it is now and I know that when he says he loves me he means it. I know it. I know when that bridge was crossed, I remember the day when he gave me his heart, and I will never take it for granted.

The difference is that this time I am ready to be loved, and I think I'm learning how from him.
Light bulb.

There is no greater risk and there is no greater reward than love. 

That is what I know.

You can follow me on Twitter: @CeceliaHalbert

Happy New Year!

Last week was exhausting.

In a good way.

I’ve been a teacher for thirty-three years and for the seventeen years prior to being a teacher, I was a student, so my years don’t start on January 1st, they start in the middle of August, and therefore, last week was the beginning of a new year.

New beginnings make me think about past beginnings, so I was thinking about the past few beginnings and thinking this year’s beginning is the best one in a very long time. It's also not the new beginning that I expected a few short months ago.

If you’ve been following along, you know the last couple of years have been fraught with drama and despair and just in general not being sure about anything at all. The only thing I was sure of was that I wanted something entirely different. Kind of. Maybe not entirely.

I still wanted to be in love, but I wanted to be in love with someone else - someone who accepts that all the complications in my life make me who I am and loves me anyway.

I still wanted to be a teacher, but I wanted to teach somewhere else - somewhere where what I do is appreciated and I have colleagues with whom I can collaborate.

I still wanted to be a parent, but…    

You’re thinking I wanted to be the parent of someone else’s children - right?

Oh, come on. Really? 

No. 

I just wanted my children to be okay and my stress level to decrease just a tad where they are concerned. 

This year has started off with a new job - one that actually has benefits.

This year has started off with my kids being more okay than they’ve been in a long time.

And most importantly, I’m starting this year off in love with someone who knows that the job and kids are part of who I am and he’s okay with that and he loves me anyway.

So this week I started a new year. 

With a new attitude.

And sleep deprivation.

I’ll catch up eventually. 

Or not.

Whatever. 

Sleep is overrated. 

Enjoying life when it’s good is better. 

You can follow me on Twitter: @CeceliaHalbert