Author: Terri

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SOLITAIRE

  By Poem

“You know, you should win that every time.”
The images move when I touch them,
hunched over my phone
To escape.

I know what he says isn’t true.
The cards can be stacked against me.
And no matter what
I lose.

That’s okay. I don’t need to win.
Winning isn’t why I’m here.
I play to escape,
To numb.

To leave behind the judgments
And demands and criticisms
To mindlessly play
And yet …

In the back of my head, his words echo,
Activating my comfortable self-doubt.
Perhaps I should win.
Every time.

My shoulders tense as ego and id
Brandish their well-honed swords.
A familiar battle that, of course,
I lose.

Being wrong is intimate, familiar,
Like a worn blanket, smelly and stained
That I should leave behind.
And still,

I play.

 

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Waiting …

  By Poem

waiting…

waiting…

waiting…

to be old enough to go to school
tall enough to ride the roller coaster
pretty enough to have a date

waiting…

waiting …

waiting…

to be mature enough to play adult
save enough to buy a house
stable enough to have a child

waiting …

waiting …

waiting …

for the child to grow
for college acceptances and mortgages payments
and weddings and reunions and funerals

waiting …

waiting …

waiting …

for awards and acceptances
acclaim and jealousy
for the career-ending gold watch

waiting …

waiting …

waiting …

for my hair to thin
my bones to grow brittle
my body to betray me, but still

waiting …

waiting …

waiting …

to have my voice heard
to be seen as I am
to be accepted as worth the trouble

waiting …

for permission to be –

waiting …

for permission to love –

waiting …

for permission to accept –

myself.

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For Those Who Come After

  By Poem

For those who come after, don’t follow in my footsteps.
My steps will lead you only to the path I followed.
A path of uncertain footsteps, hemmed in by the guardrails of convention.
A path filled with the boulders of societal expectations,
And the sharp, broken shards of glass walls it pushed through.
Pushed from behind with expectations of those, like you, who might come after.
A path filled with detours across thistled streams onto roads even less traveled.
A path drenched with the patter of fear and beauty, hope and regret, longing and belonging,
And joy.

 

For those who come after, please don’t follow in my footsteps.
My steps will lead you only to the path I followed.
Step off the path.
Pull back the brambles.
There. See?
Your path awaits.

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Recollecting My Voice

  By Poem

I can recollect
the voice inside me saying,
Be. You’re the sunshine.

The voice urging I was more
than what others expected,
what fit into their lives,
what made them comfortable.

I was more.
More than just a mirror held up to others.
More than a stale bread to complement the perfect pasta of their lives.
More than a partner to correct their typos.
More than the quiet one who sat in a corner
listening rapt to their conversations,
unable to contribute,
unable to be.

that voice is gone, leaving no echo.
maybe this is all I am.
maybe this is all I was ever going to be.
a reflection with no substance.
nothing on its own.

 

February 18, 2021

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Inauguration of Sixty

  By Poem

Today, I am sixty.
An old woman
With knees that creak
And knobby fingers that
Scarcely want to bend.
Why do you fear me?

 

I have lived an ordinary life.
An unnoteworthy life.
A normal life of high school,
College, marriage, job, kids.
It left yours untouched.
So why do you fear me?

 

I had never been to the South,
Until I was grown because of
What your fear would drive you to
If you saw us, stopped us, saw what we were,
And were afraid.

 

You have always been there
Coddling your fear-made hate.
Often in blessed silence,
But not isolated, and never alone,
Waiting, for someone to nurture your fear
rather than help you move past it.

 

Sometimes, you confronted me.
You broke my windows,
Refused to report a crime against me,
Called me an abomination,
Screamed obscenities from your pickup
In my small town, as I walked home from work.
But still, I don’t understand,
Why do you fear me?

 

Today, I am sixty.
I’ve made more mistakes
Than I can count on both hands
And probably even my feet.
I am only human, just like you.
So why do you fear me?

 

The day I was born,
An inauguration took place,
Anointing leaders who called on us
To do more than we could,
To be better than we were.
And together, we did it.

 

Today, I am Sixty
And for the first time,
An inaugurant looks like me.
Making the inconceivable possible.
“You can become whatever you set your mind to,”
Took a step toward truth
For those without the privilege.
Making us better than we were.

 

Today I am Sixty,
And not afraid of being better.
Are you?

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I am not Black

  By Poem

I am not Black,
But neither am I White
Or Male.

 

I am not Black
And have had the privilege
Of walking safely in daylight
Free from harassment
Free from name-calling
Free from threats.

 

I am not Black
But that privilege
Was taken away from me
By a dictator giving permission
To the hate-filled and misguided
To yell obscenities and threats at me
As I walked home from work.

 

I am not Black
But I could not confront them
As they drove by,
Thumping baseball bats in their hands
In the back of their pickups.
I could do nothing but drop my head,
And let their words burn into me.

 

I am not Black
But a knight of the dictator
Refused to acknowledge when I spoke
Answering his question about my business.
He dismissed our community as “cute,”
Where women played at men’s jobs
Rather than staying at home,
Unseen and unheard.

 

I am not Black
And so I cannot fully understand
The depth of the damage of these attitudes do
Day after day,
Year after year,
Generation after generation.

 

I am not Black
But I empathize
And I celebrate today
As we depose the dictator.
I am not Black
But I know the celebration is premature;
The real work is ahead of us.

 

I am not Black
So I ask those who are
To remind me in the days, weeks, years to come
Of the work that must be done
So that you and I can walk in safety,
Together.
No privilege needed.

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Why I Cried at Beauty And The Beast

  By Essay

emma belleMy son had turned one when Disney released its original Beauty And The Beast in 1991. I was enthralled with the fact that Belle – the main character in a mainstream animated movie – was intelligent. In fact, it was her primary characteristic! It gave me hope that my son would grow up in a different world than mine. in my world, my first boyfriend dumped me because my grades were higher than his, the biggest hope my parents had for their head-in-the-clouds daughter was to marry someone to take care of me, and bonuses and raises I earned through hard work and being smart in my former legal career were allocated to my male counterparts. In the world I had lived in, being intelligent, as a woman, had no value.

Andrew is now twenty-six and, unfortunately, incidents like those and a thousand others still frequently occur. Yet, it isn’t the same world as the one I birthed him into. In that world, we remained silent to avoid being driven out of our careers, marriages, and social connections. It was a man’s world and women were to be grateful for mere existence. That has changed. Now, women and men can speak of the unfairness, the injustice, and the counterproductiveness of treating women as lesser than men. And for those who remain voiceless, others have stepped up to speak for them – people like Emma Watson and her HeforShe campaign advancing gender equality.

So why did I cry as I watched Ms. Watson reprise the role of Belle? Because this Belle wasn’t simply an echo of the animation. Both by script and Ms. Watson’s portrayal, Belle has more depth: she is fearless and in control. Her father respects who she is and does not suggest she marry Gaston as did the animated Maurice. The story, of course, remains a romance, but this Belle’s adventures do not end with finding her prince. This Belle will seek out challenges in the “great wide somewhere” and now has an ally to cheer her on. Thank you, Disney, for the updated Belle.

Yet modern Belle, alone, didn’t bring me to tears. It’s just fiction, after all. It isn’t real. Yet I sat in a theater and watched this character brought to life by someone who has fearlessly used her intelligence and leveraged her status to speak for those who are not heard and advance the causes of social justice. That moved me more than my tear ducts could handle. Animated Belle revealed a potential for the world to be different, more accepting, less petty. Now fearless Belle and the actor who played her say nothing can stop that world from becoming a reality. Thank you, Ms. Watson.

And so I cried as I watched the new Beauty and the Beast. Of course, I loved the movie, just as I loved its animated precursor. Then again, “I want so much more than they’ve got planned” has been the refrain for my life. But that’s another story …

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Make a Difference

  By Essay

We enter this season of thankfulness for all that we have, in the midst of cries of “Not in my back yard.” No matter where you stand on accepting Syrian refugees into your area, they desperately need your help. This is a link to a list of vetted charities assisting Syrians in need. Some organizations provide resources for families to stay in Syria. Others provide assistance in the places where they flee, having nothing left behind them.

Words of concern and outrage are cheap. It is time to put your money where your mouth is. This holiday season, I will be making donations on behalf of my children to the organizations of their choosing. I ask that you consider doing the same.

We CAN make a difference.

syria-3-580

 

http://www.charitynavigator.org/index.cfm?bay=content.view&cpid=1523#.Vk5LXfmrTIV

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The Talent Myth in Creative Writing

  By Essay

When I was practicing law, no law student said to me, “I’m going to get listed in Best Lawyers of America.” It takes seven years of higher education to become a lawyer, months of intensive studying to pass the bar exam, then more years of unrelenting work to build the kind of reputation and satisfied client base that gets you noticed. Most non-lawyers are impressed when they hear I’m listed in Best Lawyers.

On the other hand, when a group of people finds out I’m a published author, someone usually pipes up, “I’m going to write a novel. I’ll be joining you on those bestseller lists.”

Although lawyers are not held in the highest esteem in this country, there is a profound respect for the time and effort it takes to become one. For authors, it is exactly the opposite. We adore authors. We follow them on Facebook, we show up at conventions to get signed copies of their books, and we sit in rapt attention listening to them read. But at the same time, there is little appreciation for the time, effort, sacrifice, and sometimes brute force it takes to write a novel. As a society, we believe that writing is a matter of talent and if you have it, the words flow out all at once, with little practice or preparation, and in perfect form and order.

For far too long, I believed this talent myth, and given how much effort I put into my novels, I thought the bucket I’d dipped from the talent pool was drier than the Sahara Desert. But talent is mostly a myth. Sure, you need an innate sense of when your words flow together and a touch of imagination but, otherwise, writing – like any other skill or expertise – is about long, time-consuming, hard work. As Malcolm Gladwell explains in his book, Outliers, it takes 10,000 hours to achieve complete mastery in any field.

I didn’t make it into Best Lawyers in America until well after I had 10,000 hours of practice under my belt. Writing fiction set that clock back to zero, but I’m nearing 10,000 hour mark of studying writing and actually writing. I’m more comfortable with my skills and understanding of what works and what doesn’t than I was when I started. The talent myth doesn’t play games with my head anymore. I’m too busy writing to let it.

But the next time you read a novel where the words flow effortlessly off the page and you find yourself marveling at the author’s talent, stop for a moment and appreciate the hours of sheer determination that went into it.

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Gang-based societies and immigrant children

  By Essay

In my research for the novel, Choices, I became familiar with the horrors of gang-based societies – of the atmosphere of constant murder, rape, and torture of and by those we consider children, of parents extorted out of their meager resources so their daughters will not be taken, of mothers sacrificing one child to protect the others. While the details of the society in my novel are extrapolations of actual facts, they are, if anything, softened to suit our comfortable, safe sensibilities. The reality in some areas is far worse and spurs the flood of children illegally entering this country.

I read posts that we, as a country, should not be assisting the children who were sent to violate the law by entering the United States. I see people posting that we, as a country, should not be providing aid to any other country as long as people here in need – even if it is need for relief from taxes so they can afford to send their children to college. I can understand that position as well.

But put yourself in the place of a mother or father – being demanded to turn over a child to be raped and killed. What would you do to save your children? Would you break the law? Of course, you would. If a child came to your door, hungry, exhausted, having escaped certain rape, torture, and death, would you turn them away? Or would you handle it in a way that you, as a parent, would want your child treated? That is the question all of us face but often choose to ignore.

I know from my research that the dangers and horrors they are trying to escape are real. I cannot unsee the child on my doorstep. I cannot simply close the door. I know whatever I do as an individual won’t solve the problem but, just perhaps, it will make a difference in one person’s life.