Advice Giving (A draft someone reminded me I'd written)
I am not sure what is more important: to tell you how I used
to narrate my life in my mind while I walked the neighborhood
as a child? How I never moved my lips, but somehow
made more exciting that single horse farm on the corner,
the one without the palomino I imagined should have been there?
Or the story about how I was actually a ballerina in training?
Or sometimes, it was a Covergirl model (except I didn’t know what
they did in real life, besides exercise, wear makeup, and have
pictures taken). Or should I tell you why I give advice too much,
now that I am closing in on aging? To explain how speaking out loud
my experience can sometimes help the both of us? Maybe I’ll tell you
about my grandparents’ driving, how my grandfather on the Sicilian
side got pulled over, was questioned, and how he told the officer, simply,
“I was looking at the clouds.” And that other time we ladies were with
my grandmother who also got pulled over, and when she said something
about not deserving a ticket, the officer slammed a fist on the hood
and bellowed, “Do you know what you are? You’re a typical woman driver!”
How I asked my mother in a whisper why that man in uniform was so mad,
and what did it mean to be a typical women driver—or a typical anything—
because I had never heard the word before, and I still didn’t understand.
And I think my advice now, as an older woman who watches clouds,
who wanders the world in search of horses and stories better
than ourselves, is to share what you know freely with those
who might need it, but also listen to yourself—not the way demanded
when you’re in a fight with your lover, or some stupid Facebook
troll, or a sexist cop in the early 1970s—but the way you would
listen to your closest friend, or strain to hear the swish of horsetail
in the early morning wind, long after the farmland was sold.
Drafted March 15, 2024
Author's note: In March 2024, we had not yet found our current home. We were bouncing from Airbnb to Airbnb trying to sell our townhouse in a suburb that has become an industrial zone. I had been forced out of my job by sexist, ageist, ableist managers. I'd had a breakdown. I have always been a seeker of beauty, of nature, of justice. And I think, what has it meant to live in this female body? To work in a patriarchal society and try to earn a living? To grow old? To still daydream? I have come a long way in terms of protecting my health. We now live in a beautiful home surrounded by nature. I have a loving husband, family, friends and a life. I am blessed beyond measure. And I might still go back and edit this poem.
Posted in Katherine's Coffeehouse
