Poem: "The Most Room in Your Heart"
Dec. 16th, 2017 03:46 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
ysabetwordsmithThis poem is spillover from the December 5, 2017 Poetry Fishbowl. It was inspired by prompts from technoshaman, alexseanchai, and janetmiles. It also fills the "guardian angel" square of my 12-3-17 card for the ![[community profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/community.png)
genprompt_bingo fest. This poem has been sponsored by technoshaman. It belongs to the Damask thread of the Polychrome Heroics series.
"The Most Room in Your Heart"
There are two locks on the door
of the bedroom that once belonged
to Maisie and now belongs to
both Mallory and Dairinne.
One is a simple sliding latch,
high up toward eye level, and
the other one is the key lock in
the metal plate under the knob.
Mallory likes locks.
They are simple and
easy to understand.
They make boundaries
both clear and secure.
After all the time that
she spent sleeping on
the futon on the landing,
Mallory revels in having
a door that she can lock.
The problem is that
locks and babies
don't really mix.
Heron has impressed
on her that it's not safe
to hand over the baby,
lock her door, and then
fall asleep where nobody
could reach her in a crisis.
Nor is it particularly safe
for Mallory and Dairinne
to fall asleep together in
a locked room, just in case
something should go wrong.
And locking Dairinne in is
apparently right out, even though
it'd keep people from waking her up.
That leaves Mallory with a room
that can't (shouldn't) be locked,
and of course, in a house full of
college students, it means that
people barge in at awkward times.
After the time that Paige walks in
on them both completely starkers
because Dairinne had barfed on
Mallory and it was easier just
to shower off together and
Mallory hadn't gotten clothes
back on them yet, she's had it.
"I can't stand this," Mallory says
to Heron, waving her hands. "I don't
want to live in a house where I
can't lock my frigging door!"
"It's not the door, Mallory,
it's the baby," Heron says.
"I know, I know," she says,
"but if this happens again,
I swear to fuck I will start
boobytrapping my door.
There will be buckets."
"Mmm, let's see if we can
find a better solution than
that one," Heron says.
"Knock yourself out,"
Mallory mutters.
She wants to slam
the door in his face, but
that would definitely
wake up the baby.
How is this her life?
She used to be Farce,
a scary supervillain,
the terror of Urbanburg.
Now she's afraid
to slam her own door.
"You seem pretty upset,"
Heron says. "Do you want
to talk about it while I search?"
"It's just, there's so much more
that I have to do now," Mallory says.
"I don't mean just the practical stuff
like feeding and diapering. It's that
everyone wants me to talk about
the baby and give me advice
and it's all so exhausting."
"Emotional labor often is,"
Heron says. "Some of it
is necessary to maintain
relationships ... but you
should think about which
ones you truly care about."
"Not many," Mallory grumbles.
"You. Our housemates. I guess
your family doesn't totally suck."
"Thank you for that," he says,
and one corner of his mouth
curls into a faint smile.
"I just hope that you can
come up with something
to fix the door issue before
I snap," Mallory says.
"How about this?"
Heron asks, showing
her a product page on
his tablet computer.
It's one of those silly signs
like they have in hotels to
hang on your doorknob.
One side is pink and white
with a sleeping baby and it says,
Please do not disturb. The other
is blank whiteboard with a pen
clipped along one side of it.
"Really?" Mallory says,
raising her eyebrows.
"You think that'll work?"
"It will if I explain the situation
to our housemates," Heron says.
"It's better than a bucket of water
over the head, and they know it.
They'll treat 'Do not disturb' like
a lock except in an emergency."
Mallory snorts. "You're like
my own personal guardian angel,
or would be if I believed
in that sort of stuff."
"Well, you learned
to believe in me,"
Heron says. "That's
good enough for me."
"I need to have something
to hold onto, or I will go nuts,"
Mallory says. "I have baby things
spilling everywhere. How can someone
so tiny take up so much of my space?"
"I know new babies always require
some adjustment, but I'm still sorry
that you're having such a bad time
with this," Heron says, wrapping
his warm arms around her.
"It's not bad, it's just weird,"
Mallory says. "I feel like she's
taken over my whole life. It
drives me totally crazy, and
yet I love her so much, too.
Heron hugs her tight and says,
"Sometimes, the smallest things
take up the most room in your heart."
* * *
Notes:
"Sometimes, the smallest things take up the most room in your heart."
-- Winnie The Pooh, A.A. Milne
The master bedroom is the one with the ensuite. It originally belonged to Maisie, who gave way to Damask, who passed it along to Mallory and Dairinne since a new baby has much need of a bathroom.
Door etiquette can get complicated, especially in a house shared with several housemates and a baby.
Door booby traps have their own trope, named for the bucket version. These instructions detail several methods. Watch videos for a tub of flour and funnel of water.
See Mallory's door sign. The front side is pink on top and bottom, white in the middle with a baby's face, and blue text says, "Please do not disturb." The back side is all blank whiteboard with a dry-erase pen clipped on one side to write messages.
technoshaman, alexseanchai, and janetmiles. It also fills the "guardian angel" square of my 12-3-17 card for the genprompt_bingo fest. This poem has been sponsored by technoshaman. It belongs to the Damask thread of the Polychrome Heroics series."The Most Room in Your Heart"
There are two locks on the door
of the bedroom that once belonged
to Maisie and now belongs to
both Mallory and Dairinne.
One is a simple sliding latch,
high up toward eye level, and
the other one is the key lock in
the metal plate under the knob.
Mallory likes locks.
They are simple and
easy to understand.
They make boundaries
both clear and secure.
After all the time that
she spent sleeping on
the futon on the landing,
Mallory revels in having
a door that she can lock.
The problem is that
locks and babies
don't really mix.
Heron has impressed
on her that it's not safe
to hand over the baby,
lock her door, and then
fall asleep where nobody
could reach her in a crisis.
Nor is it particularly safe
for Mallory and Dairinne
to fall asleep together in
a locked room, just in case
something should go wrong.
And locking Dairinne in is
apparently right out, even though
it'd keep people from waking her up.
That leaves Mallory with a room
that can't (shouldn't) be locked,
and of course, in a house full of
college students, it means that
people barge in at awkward times.
After the time that Paige walks in
on them both completely starkers
because Dairinne had barfed on
Mallory and it was easier just
to shower off together and
Mallory hadn't gotten clothes
back on them yet, she's had it.
"I can't stand this," Mallory says
to Heron, waving her hands. "I don't
want to live in a house where I
can't lock my frigging door!"
"It's not the door, Mallory,
it's the baby," Heron says.
"I know, I know," she says,
"but if this happens again,
I swear to fuck I will start
boobytrapping my door.
There will be buckets."
"Mmm, let's see if we can
find a better solution than
that one," Heron says.
"Knock yourself out,"
Mallory mutters.
She wants to slam
the door in his face, but
that would definitely
wake up the baby.
How is this her life?
She used to be Farce,
a scary supervillain,
the terror of Urbanburg.
Now she's afraid
to slam her own door.
"You seem pretty upset,"
Heron says. "Do you want
to talk about it while I search?"
"It's just, there's so much more
that I have to do now," Mallory says.
"I don't mean just the practical stuff
like feeding and diapering. It's that
everyone wants me to talk about
the baby and give me advice
and it's all so exhausting."
"Emotional labor often is,"
Heron says. "Some of it
is necessary to maintain
relationships ... but you
should think about which
ones you truly care about."
"Not many," Mallory grumbles.
"You. Our housemates. I guess
your family doesn't totally suck."
"Thank you for that," he says,
and one corner of his mouth
curls into a faint smile.
"I just hope that you can
come up with something
to fix the door issue before
I snap," Mallory says.
"How about this?"
Heron asks, showing
her a product page on
his tablet computer.
It's one of those silly signs
like they have in hotels to
hang on your doorknob.
One side is pink and white
with a sleeping baby and it says,
Please do not disturb. The other
is blank whiteboard with a pen
clipped along one side of it.
"Really?" Mallory says,
raising her eyebrows.
"You think that'll work?"
"It will if I explain the situation
to our housemates," Heron says.
"It's better than a bucket of water
over the head, and they know it.
They'll treat 'Do not disturb' like
a lock except in an emergency."
Mallory snorts. "You're like
my own personal guardian angel,
or would be if I believed
in that sort of stuff."
"Well, you learned
to believe in me,"
Heron says. "That's
good enough for me."
"I need to have something
to hold onto, or I will go nuts,"
Mallory says. "I have baby things
spilling everywhere. How can someone
so tiny take up so much of my space?"
"I know new babies always require
some adjustment, but I'm still sorry
that you're having such a bad time
with this," Heron says, wrapping
his warm arms around her.
"It's not bad, it's just weird,"
Mallory says. "I feel like she's
taken over my whole life. It
drives me totally crazy, and
yet I love her so much, too.
Heron hugs her tight and says,
"Sometimes, the smallest things
take up the most room in your heart."
* * *
Notes:
"Sometimes, the smallest things take up the most room in your heart."
-- Winnie The Pooh, A.A. Milne
The master bedroom is the one with the ensuite. It originally belonged to Maisie, who gave way to Damask, who passed it along to Mallory and Dairinne since a new baby has much need of a bathroom.
Door etiquette can get complicated, especially in a house shared with several housemates and a baby.
Door booby traps have their own trope, named for the bucket version. These instructions detail several methods. Watch videos for a tub of flour and funnel of water.
See Mallory's door sign. The front side is pink on top and bottom, white in the middle with a baby's face, and blue text says, "Please do not disturb." The back side is all blank whiteboard with a dry-erase pen clipped on one side to write messages.
Re: Thoughts
Date: 2017-12-18 11:02 pm (UTC)Yep.
>> I'm still dealing with side effects after my open heart surgery, and am not healing as fast as I had hoped. <<
:(
>> I'm cranky, and pretty much all the time. And I'm cold, to the point I feel like my BONES are cold constantly, and I had thought the improved circulation of getting the congenital heart defects repaired would have made that better, not worse. <<
Possible causes:
* Anaethetics are toxic. Useful, but that doesn't make them not poison. Some of the effects can last for months -- which means any 'depressant' effect may be suspected as related to that, including suppression of body heat or tampering with perception of thermoregulation.
* Surgery does damage. Major surgery does major damage. That also takes a long time to heal, people routinely feel like crap for months, and some of the effects just aren't obvious ones like pain. Among the more obscure is simply that a lot of your body's energy is tied up in nonliquid ways. If you exceed the liquid energy, the remaining expense gets ripped out of the bedrock -- and then those things don't work right. Like, say, your thermoregulation, immune system, or neurotransmitters. Your body may simply not have enough energy to keep the heat on.
Feeling cold is best fixed by providing external heat. Insulation only helps to the extent that your own furnace is working. You can make or buy heat packs stuffed with rice or other things.
Regarding mood: First check for contextual issues. If you're crabby due to pain, cold, not being able to get things done, etc. then it will rise and fall as those things occur. This is best fixed by changing what can be changed. If it's static then it's more likely biochemical. Sometimes the brain just doesn't have the energy to make neurotransmitters, you run short, and it sucks. If this is the problem, there are herbal supplements and synthetic medications that can replace some of them. But then you need to know what you're short of -- and be aware that if the root cause is an energy shortage, drugs that merely stimulate production either won't work or will burgle that energy from somewhere else which will then promptly fail and cause a whole new problem. :/ On the bright side, biochemical mood failures are a lot more fixable, one way or another, than feeling like crap for absolutely no discernible reason.
In general: the reason for coddling people with illness/injury is to save their spoons for healing. Aside from essential self-care and enough exercise to keep your body working, guard your spoons jealously until you actually start feeling better. As long as you feel like you've been run over by a truck, it's probably because your body is still trying to repair damage, so exerting yourself -- even to a normal extent, let alone pushing extra -- just makes it take longer.
>> Um, NO. I remember that period as actual hell, and if he doesn't, <<
Many women do. Most men do not.
While Heron has more energy than Mallory -- due to not having gestated the baby -- he's a lot more involved than average. Plus he can feel what's going on in her body if they're close enough. Coparents who are deeply involved in infant care are much more likely to realize how hard it is. But no matter how much help you have, the person who gestated will be exhausted for at least a couple weeks just because of the physical stress and recovery.
Now add in breastfeeding, and it takes even longer because there go all those calories and their energy down the baby's infinitely demanding maw.
>> But he still doesn't really understand how hard that newborn baby stage was on me, also nursing and typing college assignments, <<
>_<
>> and he still thinks we "should've discussed more kids" before surgery.<<
It sounds like you were in the range of "women can die from this." Any miscarriage has a risk of bleeding to death. Doesn't happen often, but it can.
>> Nope, I couldn't deal with: more miscarriages, more infertility treatments ONLY able to be authorized after 2 more miscarriages, and the newborn baby stage knowing our parents couldn't help. <<
Well that's evil. >_< I really resent how much people meddle in other people's reproductive choices. Watch two more beloved babies die before someone else might deign to offer medical care? There ought to be a special circle in hell for people who cause that kind of grief.
>>Told him I would actually help raise a baby if he did convince another woman to bear one for him, but I could NOT do all that again.
I'm still proud of myself for knowing my limits.<<
Go you!
>>Postpartum depression isn't my problem, but postpartum psychosis from hormones interfering with hard earned control on the irrational rage aspect of my autism JUST might be.<<
That makes sense.
>> I love my teen, but I really think my medical issues needed more care and treatment FIRST. <<
Well duh.