Afterbirth, My Wrinkled Hands

Sometime in the night or yesterday in last few days while I was distracted with noise and blather the last husks of my chrysalis fell heavily down away from the last place I held them firmly, my hands. Oh my hands were even and silky and hidden in this shroud. I look down now and know that some time recently that old, harbored, same guarded afterbirth must have fallen away and dragged down the sheath of time that kept my hands. I feel a light and emptiness in my cradle and I see a light and emptiness in my hands. These hands are not plump with youth, they are thinning and telling. They are her hands and I am glad to see her. I just need to take time to really notice this falling away.
3/16/2009 1:49 PM

Afterbirth
Orphaned again but not dropped in the floor of the hospital
Left with the swing of a slap, but not the sting of a slap
A calloused face has no feeling during manners undone
The most useful and peculiar motion of this dropping
Is that during the fall she can only notice the event
She wasn’t not nauseous or confused or afraid
Only noticing that it was beginning, this end
How clever, clear and certain she felt feeling
About not feeling, not fearing, no anger
No lost standing or waiting, just done.
Kimberly L. Stansfield –

Moving To Costa Rica

In the early parts of 2009 my family planned to relocate from small town, Greer, South Carolina to points unknown in Costa Rica. I don’t remember the exact day or date that John suggested we move our family to a third-world country, but I remember distinctly how excited I was with the notion. We were going to travel much of Costa Rica before deciding where to settle. We began to plan and prepare. We talked about how to go and what we would take, how long it would take to be ready to actually board a plane. We discussed what we actually needed of our possessions and then we long talks about what we wanted to own, had we become just objects in our own home? Were we over-consuming, were we complaining about the very lives we’d made for ourselves. The more we examined how much excess we held on to, the more clearly it was to us that we needed to change our lives so that we would be more in line with our values. We started saving the large amount of cash necessary for our travels. Our two daughters began to mention how much money we could put in our Costa Rica cash box if we skipped the fast food and made sandwiches. We wanted to explore and travel, we wanted to more respect our community and respect the childhoods of our children. We had discussions with the children about what five things they would grab if the house were on fire. We asked what each would grab if they could take five things for the other members of the family. How many boxes of holiday cards did we need to reassure ourselves we’d had good birthdays and good Christmases? How many handprints and elementary school papers do we need to feel like good parents? Were we held captive by gifts accepted long ago, or photos and letters we didn’t intend to enjoy? We wanted to narrow our possessions so that our most beloved treasures would fit in a cedar armoire we own. The very best of all our things, based solely on our personal feelings; objects made special by our conditions, not by a price-tag - that is what we kept. A tiny wooden train car, less than size of an egg, it was left in our V.W. Bus. John loves it. I discovered that more than art or any other thing, I treasured a green beaten up wooden tool box. It had been used long ago by John’s grandfather at the textile mill. Riley had to have her blankie and Finley wanted to keep something my mom gave her. Our plan was to store that armoire at my aunt’s house and go to South America with just a suitcase each. We planned to send for our treasure when we were ready to settle. My husband came to me in January or early February and put us on the track to move. We did hundreds of hours of research about individual cities, towns and we even started learning to speak Spanish. We followed blogs by other American ex-pats in Costa Rica, we made it our full time job to read material about our new land. It was very fun practicing with the girls and discussing whether we wanted to live on the coast or in the mountains. We decided that it would be interesting and good practice to try to live without some of our American comforts, or at the very least we would jump well out of bounds of our comfort zone before we actually moved. We cut off cable just around the time that digital signals became a requirement and without cable we had no television. We still had the laptop but no service without short trips to the Wi-Fi hot spot. It was a very educational experience for us. We learned that we liked to play scrabble and we learned to exist together without electronic distractions. We learned to use our television to watch movies on purpose, with intention and as an occasion not as background noise. We started eating together and eating unusual meals, different varieties of foods, off brands, different brands. Knowing the likelihood that we couldn’t get Duke’s Mayonnaise or Jiff peanut butter in Costa Rica we were practicing to choose differently and notice the good and notice the unpleasant. We stopped using paper products and started walking more and more. We began to frame our lives around being in Costa Rica. Our girls were excited about not going to school at first or homeschooling. We were very keen on moving about freely, lowering our cost of living and improving our chances of mere contentment. “When we get to Costa Rica…” It was so common that it became bigger than our family. “Going to Costa Rica” would make all of everyday’s trouble go away. We were evolving yes, for certain, but not fast enough to realize that we were delaying some of our Costa Rica ideals until our passports were stamped. Sure we had sold eighty percent of our furniture, clothing, kitchen items and toys. Sure we had gone without TV and creature comforts, but saying that we would spend more time with each other when we got to Costa Rica was just silly. We could spend any amount of time we wanted together in Greer, S.C. The upside of really focusing on our family dynamic and planning in this way is that you have time, time to dream, time to plan and for us most importantly time to change our minds. Time to change our lives was ours, ours alone. Some friends upon hearing that we would move to Costa Rica were so limited in their imagination were compelled to ask what we were running from. These accusations were hurtful at first and then somewhat funny – we questioned ourselves. What we were running toward and away from and the short list was the religion of consumerism that is so prevalent in our part of the world. We wanted to get away from the fat people at the buffet, stuffing themselves in oblivion, unaware of how sick they made others. We wanted to get away from our own stagnant routine, our lack of enthusiasm for the lovely farmhouse we lived in. We wanted to be away from racism, stupidity and spoiled kids. We wanted to change and so we did, all the way up to the passports. We changed our entire family and decided we would move, but stopped just short of going. We would enjoy a new house, newly built and in a community we truly love. We decided we could ultimately control what happened in our home and choose if we wanted to look away from the buffet table. We chose to accept the simple impending truth that John would eventually be unable to continue to stand for work. We accepted that his limitations would make Costa Rica less than what we wanted. We came to understand that for our family alone, Costa Rica and this trip we had planned had really turned into a journey. We could imagine, plan, implement and concede and build all in a short time, without checking in with each and every family member, friend and acquaintance for permission or acceptance. People that know me have heard big ideas from me before and perhaps one day I will have heard another – the Costa Rica idea was actually something that my husband came up with and I am so happy he did. So excited in fact that I told everyone I knew and everyone I met about it. How incredible it was to think about being in third-world paradise that was mostly bi-lingual, where the schools are taught in English and where our dollar was worth more. I was incredibly chatty about our trip, our discoveries and our intentions. I was also childishly embarrassed when we changed our minds. I was convinced that my friends would think I was crazy. Crazy for planning the trip, crazy for telling people and perhaps crazy for thinking we could do it. I was embarrassed and still stung from the skeptics that doubted our motives. I didn’t get over the initial embarrassment until we started building a home in Taylors. Our values are never constant and neither is our situation. Life changes and being comfortable with the fact that it does is very, very cool. I can’t imagine where life will actually take us, but I am thankful we are here and thankful for now. I can idle or throttle or fly, so long as I pause to take a bearing and navigate for myself. I still want to travel to Costa Rica. I feel like the notion of going there was more rewarding than the trip.

Blessed Bathrooms

John wants to know why everyone in the house can't have an individual bathroom. I am just grateful that in our modern age and prosperous country we can shit indoors. No ala Green Mile outhouses!

"During periods of so-called economic depression, societies suffer for want of all manner of essential goods, yet investigation almost invariably discloses that there are plenty of goods available. Plenty of coal in the ground, corn in the fields, wool on the sheep. What is missing is not materials but an abstract unit of measurement called 'money.' It is akin to a starving woman with a sweet tooth lamenting that she can't bake a cake because she doesn't have any ounces. She has butter, flour, eggs, milk, and sugar, she just doesn't have any ounces, any pinches, any pints." - Tom Robbins

I found this quote while reviewing some of my favorites. It sums up how I feel right now. Quit being stingy and do your patriotic duty - go buy something! You might not live long enough to your ever-pending rainy day.

Notice

Sometime in the night or yesterday in last few days while I was distracted with noise and blather the last husks of my chrysalis fell heavily down away from the last place I held them firmly, my hands. Oh my hands were even and silky and hidden in this shroud. I look down now and know that some time recently that old, harbored, same guarded afterbirth must have fallen away and dragged down the sheath of time that kept my hands. I feel a light and emptiness in my cradle and I see a light and emptiness in my hands. These hands are not plump with youth, they are thinning and telling. They are her hands and I am glad to see her. I just need to take time to really notice this falling away.
KLS

Whiteness
Amazing how nine pictures of a stretch of land could take my breath a way and almost make me cry and how such a white hot bright light existed on the day they were taken and I wasn’t even there in the right side of the picture but it’s right there, right there in the right side of the pictures a bright white light just like light outside today that I sat outside in today and had my lunch. Today I sat outside in it and let the breeze blow right over me and loved being in it and came up here to get back to it and saw the one last thing that I hadn’t deleted because it had the those nine pictures and there was the bright white light. So distracted by the weather, the beauty of it, I left my orange bag under the table where I was eating and walked away with just my phone and the Bella paper I was reading, got all the way to the back of my building when a smashing white smile attached to a suit and a beautiful man grabbed my arm, “Ma’am – you left your bag”. I thanked him and neglected to say anything charming or worthwhile or flirty or memorable. He was gorgeous and I can’t remember what he looks like. All I can see is the bright white light in the nine photos of my tiny island and the day around me, behind me out of my office and I know that I am forgetting everything and it is suddenly, suddenly so very very very sad on what was such a happy happy day. Fuck. fuck. It is really slipping away from me.

Kimberly Lenora Stansfield
When Emily’s ring had to be returned.

Touched, Touching

Touch, Bet With James

I heard a man named James say that shaking hands more than three times with anyone in any given day is against his personal code of conduct. He doesn’t do it because it just means the person is full of shit, that the person is insincere that twice is plenty. Once upon arrival, again when you leave is enough. He says that anything else reeks of a used car salesperson; smarmy. Dis-endeared by repetition. Dis-ingenuined by the nature of touch. I can not agree but it is my nature; I am apt to touch. I long to touch, need to touch others as a way to accept or deny their genuine nature. Some read eyes, some search in others for clues to their nature in words but I reach deeper in a very tactile way to seek that which gives me clues to the very character and temperament of the person.

I was trying to talk or rather make a bet with James and I shook his hands twice, he would not shake three times. I declined the bet which was a good idea in fact and no reflection in any negative way on James, just a fact after the fact of this little idea that was at that very moment beginning to grow. As an aside the bet now I know I would have lost.

I want to touch and feel people. It is a very real need not met in my existence nearly enough. I hug my children. I touch the hands of my husband. I kiss my aunts, hug my uncles, kiss them. We kiss. Our family kisses. I kiss my friends hello and goodbye. The connectivity of humans has long evolved I think into a place where Americans talk too much and touch too less, we call, we email, we leave hollow messages and never touch anyone that touches our lives; feel out lives, handle our lives. Touch, feel and handle all words with the similar meaning that incorporate in a way the verbiage we use when speaking also about living at all. We touch others’ lives with our own. We feel life and we handle life hopefully with care and regard. When we die we automatically think to tell our co-workers, our acquaintances, even our family when the last time we saw the deceased, or what we said to them or what they said to us but almost never about the last tactile encounter. Did we touch their hand as we left their door? Did we touch them? Do we even stop to remember that detail?

I am often reported to be a flirt. I have, when happy, an easy wide smile and open arms for those I barely know ready for hugs of greeting. I endear myself, perhaps feel too much publicly and strangely appear to others to invade personal space. I however am very perceptive and rarely have crossed an unwelcome personal boundary, though from a distance one watching might observe what they perceive to be unusual or overly familiar.

So a personal rule about not shaking hands more than three times? What other personal rules have we established? How much personal space do we need, what are our limits? How do we block those out that we should allow in? Perhaps I touch too much for most of the personal taste of others. I will not stop my quest for tactile knowledge, acceptance, and inclusion, proper or improper. I will be a participating party in the race of humans knowing that we are animals first and evolving much to quickly to forget our recent evolutionary leap from which we slept together huddled barely clothed or fed for warmth in caves and now we huddle together in droves over-fed, over-stimulated, technically wired but still longing for warmth of a not altogether different warmth than that of the cave. Simple human contact, one hand, one embrace, some exchange one at a time.
Touch someone you love. Touch someone you simply like or be revolutionary and touch someone you barely know.

Kimberly Lenora Stansfield