#2: A smacking

Today, a reprieve-from-parenting poem. Though you are always parenting, whether writing poetry or missing your long estranged sons. In that sense there is no reprieve, even if they leave this world. You will be their parent until the day you die, hopefully long before they do. 

Still, you can and must lean out of the parenting world, especially if they are estranged, and lean into your own creativity and personal journey, for want of a better phrase. Tonight (Wednesday) I am leaning in to poetry...

A smacking

I love the lapping of the flames,

the crackle, a smacking of lips.

The wood so hot it burns enthusiastic

I love the cat, classic on the lap

coiled and mottled soft,

listening to the fire

I love the room, four walls plus anti-chamber                     

lead-light lanterns and Turkish rug,

two guitars, three chairs and a jug

I love the warmth, melting my muscles

soothing the cold out of its stiffness,

the silence out of its stillness

I love the man, Wordling on his phone,

stoking the fire with primal deft,

reading Sam Neil

I love the night garden beyond

lit in yellow here and there,

a leaf, a sturdy flower, a stare

I love the squabs wall to wall,

an invitation to flop,

to spread yourself out. To stop.

I love the children on the walls,

smiling...

 

#1: Sugar kills sperm

Welcome to the inaugural "'Dead' Parents Society" blog, a blog dedicated to my reflections as a long estranged mother of two sons now 30 and 24, and more recently one daughter (28) on child estrangement, the experience, the studies and some thoughts on what's to be done to lessen the pain and bring about change... I'm a parent poet and I don't know it - perhaps that's the problem...

Our parenting experience beyond our marriage (when I was 21) began with infertility. For three and a half years we tried and failed to make a baby. Many things were wrong the specialists told us. My husband's sperm had motility and quantity issues. My fertility was fine but not bursting, they said, considering I was only 23-6 yrs old. 

However they were wrong. My husband's sperm at a later test was found to be much more motile and the count average. And I was about to be retested when we had to move cities and decided not to pursue that. Instead I read up on male infertility and eventually came across the claim that 'sugar kills sperm.' As I was a crazy sugar-obsessed bulimic at the time I knew on the spot that no matter how much of my sugar binges I got rid of there must be enough sugar in my system to be killing or at least dizzying my husband's sperm. I gave up sugar and binging that was boring without it and three months later, the recommended detox period, I had conceived our first son.

Our three, circa 2001

We got lucky. Because none of the fertility experts we consulted or books read had thought to ask about my diet and I was such a compulsive bulimic still recovering from my years of obsessive ballet dieting, that if not for wanting to make a baby so bad I would never have been able to kick my sugar habit. So we got lucky when I came across that strange piece of information while researching, as it happens, for a university essay I was writing on eating disorders.

But as it turned out, that was the easiest part of parenting. The rest of it was one challenge after the next, relieved by much joy and parental pride and fun, but all culminating in the abrupt and brutal total estrangement of that son and his five-years-younger brother and partially his younger sister too. 

What went wrong? Well everything and nothing, really. That's what this blog is going to be about, reflecting on the whys and wherefores of child estrangement through my personal experience as well as some study of the estrangement phenomenon that one expert has recently described as 'the silent epidemic.' Certainly we are far from the only parents to have been thrust into this state of limbo and longing for our children, and to the point that it does feel a little like a death. As if we are only half alive while waiting to see if our children ever come back to us. 

But at the same time the four to five years since the boys' estrangement have been energised by a sense of life is short and there are things to do, by wanting to live as long as possible and keep fit to be there for them if and when they do change their minds and want to get in contact. One feels more alive too somehow. It's a strange business all up.

But that is enough on it for now. My hernia is playing up after our fish and salad dinner. I need a quick walk and a stretch to relieve the trapped gas. I'm healthy and fit but middle-aged and menopausal. That's the deal.

Hope there might be something here for other estranged parents out there to feel supported and free to share their experiences in the comments. I'll do my best to moderate and respond.

Sacha the sperm killer