tulpen's list > for sale > household items > sort of.

February vacation has turned my brain into a quivering gelatinous mass barely capable of performing basic functions needed to keep a body alive.

I did not have time/energy/ambition/giveafuck to participate in the memoir meme this week.  I had no intention of participating in the Friday red writing hood meme either.  Until, on the way home from ASL class with Owen tonight, a post wrote itself.

Here's the prompt.

Write a humorous listing for eBay or Craig's List. Talk about the history of the items, why they must go.


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For sale or trade.

Has served its owner well for thirty seven years and remains in surprisingly good working order. 

In its younger days it was used to make friends laugh, to give parents attitude, and for several years, to entertain with others like it, each taking a part and combining to produce a lovely whole.

Fourteen years ago, it met a male counterpart, was used to dazzle and woo, and turn that male into a husband.

It began to feel the cold shoulder of neglect soon after the male became the husband.  It would go unnoticed for days, weeks even.  Its owner wondering why she bothered to use it at all.

She took it to work with her, every day.  It would be ignored there too.

When the children appeared, it got taken out more often.  It got louder, and meaner, and more demanding.  But still.  Mostly ignored.

So.  The owner has reached the decision, not a difficult one even, to pass it on to one that might find it of more use.

Her voice.

The lucky owner has learned an alternative form of communication and will be using her hands to express herself from now on.

Her Deaf child will have no trouble with this.  It is thanks to him that she has this opportunity to free herself from the burden of having her words go unheeded day in and day out;

"Do your homework.  Put your toys away.  Don't leave clothes on the floor.  Wash your hands after you pee.  Schedule that vasectomy consult."

Her four year old may have difficulty at first, but she is of at least average intelligence and will catch on quick enough.  If she does not?  Too bad for her.

Her patients at work, with varying levels of Dementia and hearing loss, will not care.  They see a spoon coming at their mouth, they'll open it.  Or they won't.  The possession of a voice does not change that scenario.

The husband will likely not notice that anything has changed.

Serious inquiries only.  All reasonable offers will be considered IE: case of wine, full body massage, 7 minutes in Heaven with Johnny Depp - would all be acceptable trades; all at once if possible.

Caveat Emptor:  Voice may erupt without warning in string of profanities of varying levels of offensiveness and in several languages.

Two for one special this school vacation week!  Owner would gladly part with her hearing as Deaf kid and Muppet sister have fought and shrieked and yelled and screamed to the point that the owner cares not if she ever hears another sound ever again.

Five Minute Weight

We want you to imagine that after you have died and your daughter/son will be given the gift of seeing a single five-minute period of your life through your eyes, feeling and experiencing those moments as you did when they occurred. What five minutes would you have him/her see? Tell us about them in the finest detail.

That's the prompt for the first installment of red writing hood's memoir meme.

This is my first time joining the ladies over there at the Red Dress Club, though I know many of them. 

When I saw the prompt the five minutes jumped right out at me.  But, rules and me?   Not best friends.   What I sat down intending to write is not what I walked away from the keyboard with.  But it was what it was, and is what it is.


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A rocking chair is a mean thing to leave sitting beside an ICU crib.  No.  One can't call that a crib. That thing I sat beside for those first five weeks.  A slab of mattress, a bright warming lamp, and a baby; mostly naked, mostly lifeless, fighting silently.

But I sat, and rocked even, rocked the heavy emptiness that lay in my arms, on my chest.

Visitors came and went.  Cards appeared. Flowers too. Congratulations were accepted on the birth of my son.

That smacked of a lie; "My son."  I wasn't a mother.  I didn't have a son.

Mothers of sons hear cries and make them better. 

I heard the beeping of monitors and pumps. The thump-thump-swoosh-thump-thump-swoosh of the ventilator. Alarms sounding as oxygen levels plummeted or a heart rate raced.

Mothers of sons feed mouths and change diapers.

I pumped breast milk, labelled each bottle time and date, and placed it in a freezer. Watched a catheter bag fill with urine, and be emptied.

Mothers of sons swaddle and snuggle, shush and sway.

I dared a touch, a brush of a finger on his forehead, a pinky in a tiny palm that would feel no tiny grasp.

I held my breath every time a surgeon came around, hanging on each word, but understanding all too well that even these alien geniuses could not predict this child's fate.

I'd done no mothering. I just stared and wondered if,  not brave enough to wonder when. 

When did happen.  On May 10th, after forty days of rocking.

It wasn't my idea;  his nurse insisted. The second baby in a week, born the same as Owen, had passed the day before. She knew I needed it, that it was time.

She'd enlisted the help of fellow nurses to ensure the safe transfer of IV lines, feeding tube, catheter, breathing tube, oxygen and heart rate leads, and baby from crib to lap.

Waiting with a pillow on my lap to receive him, one nurse picked him up as another held all of his lines and yet another disconnected his breathing tube from the ventilator, it screamed in warning as the three of them swiftly made the trek, three feet to my lap, placed him down and reattached his air supply.

More laying on me than I was holding him; I felt the weight of his body on mine. He didn't move, not a wiggle or a squirm, the deep sedation he was under rendering him heavier than his eight pounds. His weight soothed an ache like massaging a knotted muscle.

I didn't bother with thoughts of a someday homecoming, a nursery, a first birthday.  My eyes didn't try to see beyond the apparatus on his face to pick out any resemblance.   I didn't hear the monitors or alarms or ventilator.  Al and I barely spoke.

For five minutes I simply sat, and rocked, letting myself feel the weight of him.  Letting myself know that whether this be the first or the last time I held him; for five minutes he was mine.