This is a Rebel Song

For The Earth-movers and The Disrupters

“I’m dancing with seven veils

want you to pick up my scarf

see how the black moon fades

soon I can give you my heart

I don’t know no shame

I feel no pain

I can’t see the flame

but I do know Mandinka” -S. O'Connor

It’s the end of July already. We’re still in New Hampshire, at my parents’ house. My Arkansas sister met one of my brothers in New York on her way home as he was on his way to New Hampshire. So, of course, we stuck around to see him. He and his family live in The Dakotas now. He’s a bit of a little jerk, in the most charming of ways. He has no filter, essentially. Sometimes even he looks surprised by what comes out of his mouth, then he’ll laugh a shocked laugh at himself. It’s endearing. He tells outrageous stories. One of the things I admire most about him is his ability to say he doesn’t know something when he doesn’t. I think highly of people who are perfectly at ease admitting when they don’t know something and are willing to learn more about a topic.

Treasure Wheels

I made fast friends with one of his children. This nephew is six. He told me all about how he couldn’t talk before because he had an accident and lost his hearing. I asked him what the accident was and he told me people spoke too loudly around him when he was little. He told me he goes to speech therapy, but he said he still doesn’t speak well and nobody can understand him. I told him I could understand him and that I admired his patience with me when I couldn’t. I also told him not many people are on the frequency of my mumbles either. He might have a touch of love for drama because he told me his preschool teacher left a note in his locker which said, “I don’t like you, Parker.” Which, you know, I’ve met some foul people in my life, but I don’t think a teacher would stoop to such levels. He told me he doesn’t like school, and then asked if I know what they do at school. He said they make you make friends, and then, they make you PLAY with those friends. I mean, the horror! Can you imagine being forced to make friends? On the day they were leaving, we were sitting around a patio table. On the table were a set of wheels off of a toy tractor. Parker came around and told me that these were his treasure wheels. He interrogated me and one of his cousins about trying to steal his treasure wheels. He was sure it was me because I am “sus”. We had a wild game of it. When his mom came to collect him into the van she told him to leave the wheels. I told him he could take them if he liked. A bit later, when my brother made his final good-byes and went to the van, he came back over to me, handed me the treasure wheels and told me. “I was told to give these to you.”  Megan and I decided we would take them traveling with us. We will take pictures of the treasure wheels at whatever cool places we find and send them to Parker. Parker taught us all about bedrock and cobblestones and how trees make oxygen. I hope he always has a curious and generous mind. I hope next time I see him he’ll tell us all about some new and interesting thing he has learned.

My mom and dad meeting their newest great grandson.

We also met a new great nephew. His dad is my nephew I talked about a few blogs ago who feels like a son to me. New babies pretty much make the world go around; I can't help but be optimistic when I meet a new human. I always think hopeful thoughts about humanity then.

Megan and I are building a patio for my mother-in-law. Are we masons/landscapers? No, no, we are not. But we know how to work hard and how to do research. My dad was a master mason and I have several  other relatives who work or have worked in these trades so we know who to call if we have questions and problems. Megan’s mom picked a lovely spot in her yard for the patio.

It will have great views of one of my favorite mountains and limited views of my favorite small mountain range that hosts one of my favorite long trails. It is on a hill that basically slopes in all the ways so we have a lot of digging to do. It’s been unnaturally hot. We get up at daybreak and make our way over to Megan’s parents’ house. We work until the hot feels like a heat stroke might happen. When we leave, we take the round about way and jump off a bridge into the cool waters of the Souhegan River. I worry about E-coli in the rivers and ponds because of all the flooding that has happened, all that runoff polluting the water. But it’s too hot to let the anxiety stop me. I just say a prayer and take a high dive into the cool waters below. I have done some rough calculations about how much a cubic foot of earth weighs and how much we have to move; it’ll be about 13,000 pounds. We are using some of it to fill in some dips in the lawn. The rest we are running to the back field in wheelbarrow loads. I am getting my steps in plus weight training. Anyway, whatever people get paid for doing physical labor outside, it’s not enough. The weather looks more agreeable next week so I think our work should move along at a much quicker pace. I’ll let you know how it turns out.

Home.

We are starting to feel homesick. It took me a minute to name this feeling because we don’t have what most people would call a home. I had to sit in the feeling to recognize it as homesickness. I miss the Roofnest and the hobbit house. I am lonesome for the back-roads, the dirt roads, the two-tracks. I am lonesome for the wild, for the searching and finding of the perfect place to camp. I am lonesome for the streams, the ponds, the lakes, the mountains, the desert wind. I am lonesome for the trees I haven’t met yet. I am lonesome for the bright stars, for the cool night air, for the way wind sometimes seems straight forward, and sometimes it sounds and acts as a sentient being who is playing around the treetops or through the long grasses. I am lonesome for the wild flowers and the getting to know how different wild places sound, how some forests sigh and some forests sing, how some wild places seem like they are waiting and breathless, and some wild places seem extroverted and loud. I am lonesome for the moving on.

The Moving On.

If you’ve been following along, I told you a while ago about my traumatic brain injury and how music and poetry helped make new neurological pathways in my brain. I told you how music saved my life. That was not the first or the last time music changed my life. When I was twelve or so, I heard the song Mandinka for the first time. Sinéad O’Connor’s voice blasted a hole through time and space. Her voice grabbed a hold of my soul and dragged it out of my skin. Her voice sent my soul out into the stars, out into the universe for meet up with the divine. Then her voice thunked my soul back into my physical being, made it fully present so I could feel who I really was and all the space I occupy, could occupy, would occupy. She made songs that understood me, songs that answered questions I didn’t even realize I should ask. Her music has been in heavy rotation in the soundtrack of my life for all these many years. She made gospel songs for people like me.

When I was about 16, my hair started falling out, little patches of bald here and there. We were not allowed to cut our hair when I was growing up. My hair was thick and heavy, down past my butt. I didn’t love it. It was not my crowning glory. I could arrange it for a while so the bald spots didn’t show. Then one day, it was too much. I got home from school, went upstairs to my bedroom. I sat in front of a warped, hazy mirror, myself back lit by the small-watt naked bulb that dangled from the ceiling, swinging now and then, casting strange moving shadows. I cut my hair off in chunks. Next, I used electric clippers to get it as close to the skin as possible. Then I used some shitty razors and ‘bicced’ my head smooth. I glided my hands over the back of my head to feel any stubble, and shaved it until all I could feel was smooth. The doctors said it was an autoimmune disorder called Alopecia Areata. To understand this story, you must first understand that I was made with ingredients which make a recipe that a vast majority of people do not find consumable and delightful. I was a selective mute when I was young. I never spoke in school. I didn’t cough or sneeze. I didn’t make a sound. I had a bladder of iron because I could not ask to use the restroom. My first grade teacher only knew I could read because she could see the frustration on my face when other students read out loud. I did get slightly more communicative in high school. I was raised in a religious cult which made me an outsider to the community outside of the cult. But my family didn’t toe the line in the cult either so I was an outsider there as well. You must imagine how well received I was by my peers; a big girl, freakishly silent, long hair, long dresses, cult religion, above average intelligence, not-out-yet lesbian with a voracious appetite for reading. This is not the recipe for being treated well in a small town.

The next day, I had to walk into that small town high school with my shaved head and wordless ways. I took four years of French ( I only know how to say “Je ne sais pas.”). There was an older boy in my French class. We would exchange fantasy novels pretty much daily.  He wore a cape and gave zero fucks. When he took his seat behind me, he said “Oh gosh, you look beautiful; just like Sinéad O’Connor.” I’ll tell you this much; there was no resemblance between me and Sinéad. I was then as I am now, a big muscly blonde-haired, green-eyed lady. My book exchange friend was not being insincere. I don’t think he had a shred of dishonesty in him. What he said is what he saw when he looked at my newly shaven head. I like to think he saw my honesty, my inability to squash myself into societal boxes, my inability to talk more, to be less open about my love of books, my inability to not take up space. I like to think he recognized in me my love of the underdog, my willingness to stand up for ‘the least among us’. I like to think that is the O’Connor resemblance he saw in me.

I have to confess, it wasn’t some moral fiber I had. It wasn’t until I was in my thirties that I had an epiphany of sorts about how I could have changed some things about myself to make the social aspects of my teenage years go smoother. I wasn’t taking a stand. I wasn’t strong or brave; it just never occurred to my, often times singular, mind that I could or should bend to make things easier. I didn’t not buckle to peer pressure, I was too stubborn to feel it. They were wrong about what was right for me. They were wrong, and that was all. I knew what was coming to me in the days after I shaved my head.. I knew the grief and shit I would get. I knew, and I wasn’t wrong. My caped-book- exchange friend, who also knew the value of a powerhouse voice in combat boots and leather jackets, spoke kindness and steel into my spirit that day in French class- and my shoulders never flagged when what I knew was coming for me came. My shoulders never flagged because a friend and a song spoke to my soul.

My hair grew back in a few years, a shock of silver at my temples. And I never let it get very long again. I never comb it and I get ‘back alley’ haircuts from Megan. I’ve never felt regretful for shaving it that day. I learned all kinds of new things about society and myself because of a shaved head. I learned a few good things about myself and mostly shitty things about society.

I was grieved to my core to hear of the death of Sinéad O’Connor- no more will a new song roll through the cosmos to understand me, no more will her voice, singing new words, smack my soul into the divine. I don’t think we see her likes again. I am so thankful, so small and humbled, for all she left behind.

“these are dangerous days

to say what you feel is to dig your own grave

Remember what I told you:

if you were of the world they would love you” -S. O'Connor