Maternity Photos ~ 35 Weeks

We're 35 weeks now so just patiently waiting on our darling Addison to make her glorious debut into the world :)

iPad cake for Owen

Today I labored a labor of love for my youngest nephew Owen's 8th birthday. The labor? A request for an "iPad cake". Never having seen an iPad, let alone held one, I think I did a pretty decent job. Also considering that it is all buttercream frosting, not a lick of fondant! Hate that stuff! I hope he likes it. I can't wait to see his face on Sunday when I bring it over for his celebration!

Oreo Cheesecake? Say what?! :D

Home made from scratch Oreo Cheesecake Bites topped with chocolate and white chocolate :) Yum! Decided to make them just to keep me occupied for the day. Delicious! And it was perfect planning finding the recipe because it kept me distracted while Josh was battling yet another house fire this week. It's just too dang hot in SC! I plan on sharing them with family and of course, firemen, over the weekend

. First though, Josh and I have our childbirth class on Saturday which will hopefully relax me a little for labor and delivery. I'm all about having the facts before trying something new! ;)

My Little Sunshine

Addison's nose and lips making a funny face to us :-) Can't wait to see her cuteness in person!

Their Whole-Selves

Humans create art in awareness of death,
so she said and so it was. An act of
desperation to remain, be remembered,
exist outside our world, artists all.
We write the brush strokes of our lives,
individual moments, memorable.
A century, decades less perhaps, is given
to each, gifted only , but she continues to quote
Bishop, and Keats, move forward.

She’s wrapped up in the Holocaust,
Jew teeth and fallen historical societies;
while I wait here with contemporary novels,
the FX channel and broken families.
Small and judgmental is my life
to her beliefs, her darkness.
She is a poetry momma pushing for wisdom.
There is no good way to do things sometimes.
Organization waits for poetics, and lesbian
code-writing. I care for death, and
wait for art.

Openness

Always it is there already.
What do I become if I let love in?
Once more I may be whole
if she comes back to me.
I will wait for her.
A drinking straw and Turtle
are what keeps in my pocket
with the key. I locked her in there.
In the closet Emily Dickenson
pauses for attention as ambition and ego fight.
We must. We care for the reader
but speaking is policed. I know what I write.
Embrace motherhood in Brazil
and cry openly with emotion.
What do we keep from ourselves?
– I meant to say that there –
Partners, friends, siblings; instead of we.

Not In Color

Music drifts around, curvy notes left hanging in the air
by the doorway. They cover the faces of imaginary
people who bustle by and whisper hello, goodbye.
Their presence rivals window dressings and losses. Sounds,
very much like slow jazz, played on a piano
as trumpets or sousaphones nudge their way in.
Subjects do not exist and abstraction does not work
here. Here, where the world is made of words,
some in color but most, black and white.
Temperature drops degree by degree but I stand there,
watching the men load the letters into a truck
and while sweating in the gray air.
Then a pack of dogs runs by howling and tracking
language, startling me from my sights. Bark. Run.

No Symbols

Cigarettes and God don’t mix forms,
and the succubus sits on my chest
to stop my mouth from chasing insanity.
I search it out and cry in pain
with discoveries of the they.
There is a warning label on all,
attempts to control spirit and lust,
but it fails. They fail.
Terror balances lust, emotion,
and red covers the street dispassionately.
Hold your comments ‘til the end,
please. But there he is, glancing at me
from behind the flannel curtain
and I can’t help but to undress slowly
in front of the long mirror, to entertain
or beg forgiveness.

Lemon Peels

Anger is something that takes over
uncontrollable and binding of my soul.
Fingernails bite into palm flesh
as my fist clenches tightly,
like finding lemon juice in a pulp,
while I listen, swallowing repeatedly.
I divide my life into three parts:
the first is before my parents’ divorce
when everyone was whole,
the second is the space afterwards
where we waited to heal, or for redemption,
the third, and happiest, my marriage,
when I came together with myself again.
But now there is a fourth;
another affair, another divorce
for my mother to go through,
for us kids to go through.
The taste of peels puckers my face,
tight lips bound from fresh air.
Old memories enrage me so;
the fake persona he portrayed at my wedding
or at home around the family table.
I ask him of betrayal in hope of answers,
or just the one: why?
I don’t care which or when however.
There is always a
father
right in the middle of pain commenting
and contorting the image in front of eyes.
“She’s just a friend” means the end of bonds,
“I’m sorry” is just pretend words in a fairytail,
the worst, “You don’t understand” rings true.
I don’t.
But I know the answers of secrets.
Even lemon peels have a purpose
when placed in potpourri –
bitter no more.

Affection

The loaf of bread resting on the counter
was supposed to be eaten by October 13th.
It’s November 5th.
Casseroles: green bean and sweet potato
specifically, will be eaten by the children,
but there are numerous kinds filling the cold shelves
of the fridge. Ramen noodles are a food group like pizza.
She eats nothing, instead lying in bed
silent or sobbing.
We cry for her. We cry with her.
There is no reason to shop for groceries
but plenty of time to paint the walls.

5 month photo~ 5-15-12

Last College Paper - Southern Religions & Janisse Ray

Southern Religions & Janisse Ray

Religious stereotypes are commonly known in the South; the main one is that majority of Southern families are in fact extremely religious. In the early twentieth century this knowledge about religion was generally true when most Southerners were Episcopalian, however, now only about fifty percent of Southern families attend church regularly and the predominant denomination below the Mason-Dixon is Baptist. For years professionals have worked to analyze the positive and negative effects religious affiliations have on families and family life. Douglas Abbott, Margaret Berry and William Meredith conducted a study on religious beliefs and practices looking to see if it affected families in a positive way. Abbott stated their thesis saying, “Many religions provide direct education in supportive family values, attitudes, and behaviors. Sermons and scriptural readings that teach tolerance and forgiveness, for example, could be relevant and helpful to family relationships” (444). However, how much religion is productive to family life, and at what point does it start to become destructive?

For those who don’t practice it religion can be complicated to understand, but the basic idea behind it is that it is an attempt to cope with reality and the forces of life and death. Research has suggested that religion enhances the believer’s satisfaction and aids healthy family interactions. Gregory Levine, author of On the Geography of Religion, explains religion by stating that “It is imbued with doctrine, myth, ethics, and ritual. Moreover it is experiential, part of the lived world, and, in such, is undeniably, inextricably social” (431). Levine works in his article to explore the possibility of religion having a connection with geography. He analyzes the ways in which historians, theologians, structuralists and ecologists can all use religion in their individual fields of study.

Janisse Ray, author of Ecology of a Cracker Childhood, amplifies the notion that religion had more negative effects than positive ones when she references stories of her father’s, and by extension, the family’s, religious background through discussion of various childhood memories. Her first cousin, Charlie Ray, son of her father Frank Ray’s brother, explains the intimidating rules of the church his extended family were participants of. As members of Church of the Lord Jesus Christ of the Apostolic Faith, Ray’s family exercised all the rules that were expected of followers:
“Women should wear skirts, but never pants or slacks; women should
never cut their hair; women should not wear jewelry or makeup; men
should only have short, conservative haircuts; men should not wear
facial hair; no one should own a TV; no one should watch movies at
a theater; no one should wear shorts, or anything that would expose the
legs; and, no one should go swimming in a public place” (Charlie Ray 5-6).

The amount of influence Frank Ray, Janisse Ray’s father, had on her and his other children’s upbringing with his religious beliefs seems to both bring the siblings closer throughout the memoir and yet also question the family unit as a whole. Janisse Ray explains the way her father adopted the religion from a radio show saying, “Late one night, listening to his FM radio, Daddy heard a Philadelphia preacher whose words gripped him: ‘Let us have the truth, the whole truth, and nothing but the truth.’ The man was Bishop Johnson, believed by his followers, who called themselves Apostolics, to be the thirteenth apostle of God” (107). After this night, Frank Ray decides that his family will be more serious about following the rules of the Bible. Religion does indeed seem to be a way for Frank Ray to feel completed in his life but Charlie Ray notes about his cousin Janisse Ray that, “realistically the legalistic and sectarian and even cultic aspects of oneness/apostolic Pentecostalism is what emotionally and psychologically damaged my cousin and ultimately turned her against Christianity” (4).

W. Bradford Wilcox, author of Religion, Convention, and Paternal Involvement, conducted a study exploring how the father’s role in the household works alongside religion in a positive way. Wilcox announces, “Recent studies have found…that parents who participate in church activities are more likely to value obedience in their children than other parents. Parents who attend church are more likely to be involved with their children’s education” (781). It is arguable that Frank Ray wanted to be the sole example of right and wrong for his children, and that is why they were restricted from playing away from home with other children who could sway the ideas he had instilled in them.

However, Abbott suggests through his research that though religion is a potential asset in helping families develop, he also recognizes, “that religion can also be harmful to individuals and their families. Human history is replete with examples of the abuse of religion to the detriment of humankind…For example, the hurtful results of extreme corporal punishment against children by fundamentalist Christian groups have been documented” (443). For the duration of the novel, Frank Ray controls his family in multiple ways and though a strong male figure at the head of the family is often beneficial, it becomes detrimental to his own children, Janisse Ray in particular.

When ill, Frank Ray turns even more strongly to religion to help him cope with his mood swings and what are later known as manic fits. Religion, however, doesn’t seem strong enough to save or help him from these fits, which Janisse Ray notices when she is around her father. The first time that she discovers her father’s delicate mental state is when she finds him in his room speaking directly to God as if they were standing face to face before jumping out of the window. Janisse Ray notes, “I stood watching a long time then rushed to find Mama. Something was wrong with him” (78). Readers later learn that Frank Ray’s illness runs in the family tree and is akin to schizophrenia or bipolar disorder, though there is no direct mention of a diagnosis in the novel.

On his illness directly, Janisse Ray seems aware even as a child that her father was in a place where he couldn’t be reached, no matter the strength of his relationship with God. “I was not afraid of my father when he got sick. He was simply unavailable to me. He was in a place none of us could reach; not even all of us collectively could pull him back. His body was at home, he’d lost his mind – for the first time I knew the two of them to be separable,” Janisse Ray admits (78).

Personal feelings of her father’s adamant religious practices seep into her book in sarcastic tones, recollections of their attendances at church, and through blatant explanations. Explaining strenuous fasts, cult-like circles in which the entire family repeated “Jesus” over and over for hours in a room each night, daydreaming and sleeping through long church service hours, and personal restrictions on clothing, hairstyles and makeup, she emphasizes genuine unhappiness with the religious beliefs of her father. Janisee Ray offers a memory of a visit to her father in a mental institution as one summary of her thoughts on religion saying:
“Often with visitors the conversation turned to religion, and when
religious fanatics find each other, all else is forgotten. My father
would argue for hours about the Bible. He knew it frontward and
backward and was vehement in his belief, not to mention brilliant in
his argument, and so dogmatic that I continue to associate strife and
disagreement with Christianity. If he was arguing Scripture, meals
and sleep got ignored. I dreaded the subject my father craved”
(Janisse Ray 115-116).

Janisse Ray continues to show the deteriorating effects of religion on her family when she discloses instances in which her father openly beat her and her siblings. Frank Ray being a member of the Apostolic Pentecostal faith, he believed openly in punishing his children for misbehaving by the use of corporal punishment. Some of the instances Janisse Ray mentions in her book express her father taking these beliefs too far. One moment that the reader is left in shock is a description Janisse Ray gives of herself and her brothers playing with an older boy named Clay. Clay is toeing a snapping turtle until it bites down on his boot and his attempts to free his shoe fail. Without warning Clay lifts his boot and smashes the turtle, killing it. Afterwards, when the children return home they tell Frank Ray about the incident, who questions them, asking why they didn’t stop Clay. When they have no response he whips them each with a leather belt for allowing Clay to kill. The reader is left to process how the children were supposed to interfere and how their getting beaten for doing nothing is justified to Frank Ray.

During the time of her father’s “sickness”, as Janisse Ray was trained to say instead of “mental problems”, Frank Ray pushed his family almost to the breaking point to satisfy his manic fits. Because he was the head of the household and the family was religious, they were all trained to obey Frank Ray, no matter the situation. One particular moment Janisse Ray discusses is when Frank Ray locked his wife and children in the back bedroom of the house where a six-foot freezer was stored. At the end of the day he ordered Janisse Ray’s mother to take just one item out of the freezer to feed the family. Unable to be coerced into reason to let his wife cook dinner, Frank Ray explained his rules stating, “One thing…no more no less. I’ll hold the lid for you. You have to close your eyes. That’s the way God says to feed the children. One thing” (93). Obviously it doesn’t say those guidelines anywhere in the Bible and Frank Ray was in a manic fit, but his family still had to obey his instructions of eating one frozen item after having no food or water all day.

In reflection Janisse Ray might appear to find some comfort in her father’s relationship with religion because it was helpful to him emotionally, however she rarely mentions in the book how it benefitted her personally. Holidays were off limits in the Ray household for example, because they were pagan and of the world and her family were followers only of God. One Christmas in particular, though sadly remembered in the book, is a bonding experience for Janisse Ray and her siblings. Sneaking out to an area of land behind their home seldom visited, Janisse Ray and her brothers and sister decorated a tree with popcorn chains and shelled corn before exchanging homemade gifts and candy. A sense of shame for their strict religion is evident here as she also notes that they all later made up fake lists of gifts they had received to share with their schoolmates.

As she talks about the restrictions placed upon her while living at home, Janisse Ray explains that she wasn’t allowed to do things because of her parents rules, not that she chose to live her life in that way. In the chapter where she discusses her religion and its practices in depth, Heaven on Earth, she notes, “When I was young, religion was the rock foundation on which our lives were solidly constructed. More than a life of the mind, my father desired a life of spirit…God had put us here and given us the Bible as a field guide, and my father would serve him” (105). Because he is the head of the household, children must obey their father just as in religious beliefs people obey the Lord through his word, the Bible. In Trust in Testimony: How Children Learn about Science and Religion, Paul Harris and Melissa Koenig explore the way in which children come to believe in religion and its practices. They explain after several studies that children do not actually have any direct, firsthand experiences with God but instead come to know of Him through community, claims of His existence, and explanations of immortality and powers of creation.

Also open to the idea that children are naturally spiritual, Harris and Koenig conclude, “One possible interpretation of these findings is that a belief in God as creator comes naturally to children, independent of any teaching from adults” (513). They are brought to this conclusion by examining and comparing the making of a wish to praying. Harris and Koenig state that “Both practices involve a mental process that is aimed at bringing about some desired end without recourse to ordinary means-end activity” (513). However, these practices are viewed differently among Christian society; wishing is considered superstitious, while praying is taken to be a serious practice of religion.

Janisse Ray’s novel Ecology of a Cracker Childhood “provides a respectful but critical insider’s view of significant themes of Southern history: poverty, religion, cracker culture, and the transformative power of education” (Tuten 695). Using her real life experiences and relationships, Ray gives informative advice to the reader on these topics and doesn’t hold back her personal feelings at all. Though religion doesn’t seem to have destroyed her completely, Ray was definitely affected by her family’s choices. Religion does still seep into her life as she admonishes readers, “If you clear a forest, you’d better pray continuously…God doesn’t like a clearcut” (123).

Kitchen Project 2

Kitchen Project

We finally finished our kitchen! Here are some pictures of the before, remodel process and the beautiful after.

Red Horse Inn Mini-Vacation part 2

Waterfalls waterfalls waterfalls!

Red Horse Inn Mini-Vacation

A quick Living Social deal landed us a very fun, outdoorsy couple of days right on the border of North Carolina. It was a lot of hiking, looking and bonding time. And some very cool photo moments I thought I'd share. A stone chair, tons of mountaintops from Caesar's Head, the oldest bridge in South Carolina and waterfalls! :)

First Set of Maternity Photos (No nudity!)

Well, SURPRISE! Josh and I had the shock of our lives on January 21st when the reason for my fatigue and sickness (and late Aunt Flo) ended up actually being a positive pregnancy test. Yes folks I'M PREGNANT. I have to keep saying it to believe it myself. It seems the next adventure for us comes a little sooner than planned but as cliche as it is, life really is what happens when you're making plans. A little life happening inside me anyway. Very little. The size of the top of a nail according to my baby book since tomorrow I am officially 6 weeks along. It absolutely amazes me every time I stop to think. God is so crafty. There is already a heart beating inside our little one inside of me. After only 6 weeks! We are going back to the doctor next Tuesday when I hit 7 weeks (the size of a blueberry) to hear the heartbeat for the first time (which Josh and I will try to record) and double check the due date, which is currently October 2, 2012. That's all for now. I'll keep you posted! :)

17 Letters

Words. They were just simple words typed by me,
on my little pink computer, sealed and mailed,
addressed to you in A2.
But they were also my soul. They were me.
I poured my sorrows under your heart,
secured my secrets in the faucets of your mind,
shoved hope into webbing of your eyes.
Or maybe it was my eyes in the mirror?
I dreamed for you and planned with you,
pushing. Saying “you can”.
And you could.

The people will talk their talk and turn their heads
until the light shines through. Shows truth.
Then they will gaze. You still can.

Remember the first one I wrote? I spoke of family,
pretending all was fine, normal.
By the seventh letter you had a pen
and I was able to ask you questions,
wait for a response.
I waited and one came.
Everything changed and I pushed harder,
asked more questions, said “you can”.

The flag rose at least twice a week.
Several more pages and envelopes emerge from 1906.
I wrote more each letter, stuffing the words into you;
family, support, advice, info. I waited for a reply.
I realized one wasn’t coming. But I wrote more anyway.

Christmas Eve Night

There were pinecone wreaths and garlands of green
clinging to the short bars above the window.
The six foot stretch of metal, peeling brown,
was supposed to be festive, seasonal,
but it seemed a mere joke to the lobby dwellers.
An angel, colored, sat upon the highest branch
of the Evergreen, but no familiar notions of home,
of holiday, of tradition, sat with her.
Aqua carpets remained the same, stained and printed
with marks of those who visited.

I kept the seat near the entrance, and my silence,
as others trudged to the hall, the opposite direction
of the ominous red arrows and “EXIT” evenly
spaced, painted every five feet on the tan walls.
Exchanging looks and nods or slight lip curls,
we acknowledged each other, the passers and I,
as they made their way upstairs.
Upstairs, to the black pay phones, plastic chairs,
etched windows and desks. Upstairs to those in orange.

Advanced Poetry Workshop

Here we go guys, this is what we've all been waiting for. The last semester of Senior year has begun. Also, my advanced poetry workshop class. 35 poems in the next 7 weeks averaging about 5 poems a week, then the revision process of all those poems takes place in the last 7 weeks at the same pace. If you don't want to be reading all these poems that I will be posting basically every day until forever in your email, delete me now, unfriend me, unsubscribe, whatever. If you think you'll love me through-out, hopefully we can get through this together. My professor/advisor Carol Ann Davis, affectionately known as just "Carol Ann", did promise that at some point during this journey we might both end up crying and coloring with crayons on the floor of her office unable to function let alone write/read poetry. Figure I should tell you that now so you keep in mind that all the wonderful poems you've read in the past were processes worked over time and tweaked before being posted, so what you read tomorrow and the next day and the next...might not be a wonderful gem yet. Wish me luck! Talk to you tomorrow! ...Maybe? ;-)