GROWING PAINS

"Some periods of our growth are so confusing

that we don't even recognize that growth is happening...

Those long periods when something inside ourselves seems to be waiting,

holding its breath, unsure about what the next step should be,

eventually become the periods we wait for,

for it is in those periods that we realize that we are being prepared

for the next phase of our life and that, in all probability,

a new level of the personality is about to be revealed."

- 'Living by the Word: Selected Writings 1973-1987'

by Alice Walker

I've got growing pains. Silence and growing pains.

Or I brace myself with that's what I've got because it agrees so altogether

with the words of one of my household gods, Alice Walker. 

I think it like a prayer, that this time that feels so confusing

in effect is a time of growth disguised. Please let it be so.

It is his little body growing suddenly so fast it feels like we

should be able to hear it, but for him, everything is barefaced yet. 

It is me who aches and have one thousand and one nights of questions.

It is me who folds corners in one book after the other about being a

mother and craving to write, and every other one about being a

woman and taking up space. The late evenings are mine.

And the words. The words of the others. And those within that

swell me so, but refuses to come to the surface so

that I can look them in the eye.

One morning when we lay slumbery and study each other he says I

smell like butterfly milk. I write that down a bit later in a 'Cassius Says' notebook,

mark the date next to it. I think to myself then that I've become too much library

and too little poetry, too much laundry basket and too little nudity,

too much stain remover and too little dance moves.

Then I think I'm always so quick to be hard on myself.

And I think that I know this place and I've been here before, only at

another age. Been in growth or in waiting at least,

and instead felt like if utterly lost.

This is a reminder that even if I am uncertain of the future I'll want to be

more poetry (it'll have to be whatever it is) and nude more often.

There's a generous mirror that was left to hang in this flat from the

previous inhabitant. Every now and then when I'm home alone I drag

Cassius's clothes rail away from in front of it, let my dressing gown fall

to the floor and stand there naked, downright and without demeanour.

I can think to myself then, nowadays, that it is beautiful how it

has changed. The belly that has a softer roundness after carrying him,

the breasts that have more density in their drops, my shoulders and

the collarbone that bridge them that's always been strong.  

I push them back then and stand straight. In the light.

And I can think to myself now when I put this into words, that

right there is something that has come to the surface to look me in the eye.

That the writer, the woman, and the lover in me doesn't have to

be dormant in the mother's shadow. I am right here.

∞

kids malawi chair from this beautiful place
linen shell pillow by tamar mogendorff
large muslin swaddle from bonét et bonét
| selfportrait |
cassius is wearing linen trousers from mingo kids
toy furniture for pretend friends by stuül

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THEN, WHAT DO YOU DREAM OF?

Inside of the condensed darkness when the others have fallen asleep is when I think the best.

That's when the words come to me in clarity and complete form. Torrential, thorough.

So, if this, for now, is my Room of One's Own I arrange, anew, the little table on my side

of the bed, as that morning's first tea cools. I stack books & notebooks and place a

candle close; a flame for the night, draw an unstudied loop from faint scrape to firm dark

that assures the pen is spirited. I leaf through the pages of the most beautiful of the notebooks,

the linen-covered hefty one that I believe to be empty but for 500 pages waiting.

Only then do I see it's got dark plum purple batik-like stains overflowing

its edges and on the flyleaf, it's written in graphite

Cassius Lemholt Violaris 
gave birth to this book on 11 / 05 / 19
by spilling red wine all over mamma's book.

The wine delicious.
The flavour of the mood bitter.

Papa
x


p.s 


the Candy Boxing Monkey Saga

Cassius - But you're a toy..!
Monkey a.k.a Papa - Yes. But I have a life.
Cassius - Oh. Okey. Then, what do you dream of..?

You know how you know the handwriting of a loved one.
(His letters have the softest edges but follow no rules of capital or lowercase.)
I hold the book, weigh it. I think of how different our together is now.
How we've also deepened into each other, us two. Somewhere among the days
since him, we've become accomplices in the unspoken,
- the sensuality in the gaps when he's asleep, to make love there;
the glances of fear when he's hurt himself, and we're yet to know how badly;
the poorly disguised pleasure of huddling in the bathtub that really is too small for three bodies;
 the significance of the hand stretched out to hold the other's under the covers
when he has entrenched himself in the middle and in between;
the smiling eyes that meet at the sidewalk when he yells
Thank You..! Byeeee..! to yet another bus driver;
the pure joy when he answers that his favourite day of the nursery week
is the one where they go visit the old people in the nursing home down the street;
how the other's voice drops and descends, to disappear like honey
into the night alongside Winnie the Pooh.

And you know how you know when you've found the core.
How you can almost touch an insight once it's finally landed in you.
How obvious it suddenly is.
It's here I have to start. It's because of this I have to start over.
This is where my new narrative comes into existence.
I'm going to fill the most beautiful notebook.






∞

monkey in its own kimono
she delivers flowers by bike in our city
chocolate-coloured cashmere

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WHEN NO ONE IS LOOKING

Half of summer was naked, and all of her was uncomplicated.

When July and August were busy with other things, he stopped wearing nappies,

just like that. Now I find that there is something about

minimal underwear that moves me immeasurably.

I buy them in organic cotton, silk and wool as if our lives

hung on delicate and unbleached thread.   

When no one is looking I untack the tickets in the back

with my sharp little embroidery scissors. The one that looks

like a golden bird and that never sees any action other than the

setting free of labels. When my sisters and I were growing up, my

mamma rid every garment of every tag. That or she turned

pieces inside out. Now I find the oddest things are handed down thru

the generations. Like the matter of nothing being allowed to itch.

When no one is looking, we talk about his days.

There are now moments that are only his and how they seem to him.

Jimmy wasn't at the nursing home today. Where has he gone..? 

Once a week, his nursery group walks to the nursing home on the same street.

The youngest and the oldest play the piano together and tell each other stories.

They cut and create hero masks from vibrant paper. Cassius's hero and

favourite is Jimmy since first they met. We look at each other across

the table, we that are supposed to be the grownups.

Who kissed Jimmy goodbye..? is essentially what I'm thinking.

Cassius muses on, out loud.

  If I get really old, then I will die. 

(pause)

I don't like that part.

 That's when I hope my fear of death will not be a hand-me-down.

So I stay silent, and Christian is the one who tells, unbothered, his version

of what comes after you die. Tells about the Big Party in the Sky.

When no one is looking, that's what I'll be conquering,

the belief that that's where we are going. To the biggest party of all,

everlasting, together. Afterwards. This minute I'm mostly

trying to look brave, and I also try averting with looking a gulp of

red wine straight in the eye. But that's when they do see me. My family.

When no one is looking, I study my hands.

If Cassius asks about them, they are created by the sun,

when I read them to myself, they are age. There's no decoding of

those spots or of the space between them, but in his world {or is it in mine..?}

I want to stay being the Sun for a bit longer, rather than its spots.

I want to be the strong that holds his safe.
My flaws I can show him. But not of what is only skin deep.

When no one is looking, or at least not seeing, I dig my

fingernails deeply into the insides of my palms at the feeling of

not having a single soul listening quietly to the end of my sentences.

When no one is looking, tears from the feeling of failing

breaks away from me in the cold section of the grocery store

as Cassius refuses to come with me and instead squat stubbornly

looking at plastic toothbrushes that look like temperamental monsters.

I smooth the gloom away, fretted, with the back of my index fingers.

When no one is looking, we dance slowly in the kitchen,

the three of us in a sheltered embrace, Cassius resting on an arm each in

between us, faces held close, mumbling I love you in our own chorus.

When no one is looking, I stroke my own cheek.

'Yes, Mother. 

I can see that you are flawed. You have not hidden it.

That is your greatest gift to me.'

- Alice Walker

∞

no1 | linen 'bucket hat' from okounger

no2, 4 & 5 | natural necklace made from 'raw' matt amber

{i don't know if it's from constantly wearing that but over this summer

he was the only one without a single mosquito bite} - also okounger

no4 & 5, 6 & 7 | 'nikkou' trousers from illoura the label

no6, 7 & 8 | 'shell pillows' from tamar mogendorff

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SUN SALUTATIONS AND THE LIGHT BEFORE THE RAIN

I wish that he'll keep bringing me flowers. Odd florals, evenly.

Those utmost small yellow ones, that must lie rather than stand in water on a little dish,

being so exhausted from the sun and his long detours walking home.

Dried straws that may, or may not have been stolen with a swift baby hand

from a bouquet by the sidewalk of the florist.

A luminescent dandelion that runs it's stem's milk from his hand to mine.

I wish he stays morning tired with me and that we wake together

and blink ourselves used to the world, almost to each other too, anew every day.

In silence for a while, forehead to forehead, as his papa who's been up for ages,

can be heard making us tea and milk in the kitchen.

- What did you dream about, Cassius..?

- Only one thing this time, mamma..! You.

- Yes..?

- Yes. And you were so tiny you could fit inside my head with me.

Our bedroom holds the whole world in moments like this. In our mornings.

The plate with number 40 attest to my latest birthday and a gift given to

celebrate and remember the years, from a French restaurant and my own pappa.

I think of how it's taken me those forty years to start feeling at home

within the shape, the colours, the features I'm born with.

Mostly it has caught up with me, in double march, with the arrival of a boy

in whom I with a direct, natural, undivided and vertiginous insight

see the beauty of that slightly flat nose, the somewhat longer distance

between the eyes, the wild and shadowy rye blonde,

the gap between the front teeth. He didn't come in time to deter 

me from changing away my gap, the one where I could slide a coin in.

{But then I also laugh so much more and no longer hide my smile},

however, I have hope that, with him and in his first time, I can start

feeling at home in the body that has also carried his.

I wrote it down somewhere, the answer that with just one word,

as that was the task, to me describes what motherhood is.

Homecoming.

A return to that which is elementary and also essentially me.

A circle back, for better and for worse, to myself being that small.

An arrival home in him and all at once in me.

A recovery of what is most important.

What did you dream..? 

Good morning sun.

Look how beautiful the light is now.. before the rain comes.

I love you.

the photograph on the wall was a gift from the most beautiful anna malmberg |
cassius's perfectly tobacco coloured {+ beige} bedding in organic,
softest ever stonewashed cotton is from danish favourite,
the little shop okounger focused on ecology and sustainability |
and the boy.. did i actually take part in making him..?

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