Mary Carroll-Hackett's Blog, page 85

Something a Lil Different: Teaching My Sons About Rape

I can’t even read anymore about the Stanford rapist. As the mother of sons, and as a survivor, I literally felt nauseated at the father’s statement. My oldest son was nine years old when he quietly asked me, “Mom, what does ‘rape’ mean?” I was washing dishes, my back to him (as I learned, raising boys, was often the case when they wanted to ask questions that made them uncomfortable and didn’t want their over-explaining Mama to sit them down for a long-winded talk). The quiet fear in his voice as he asked still rings in my ears, even now nearly twenty years later.

He was afraid to know. But he needed to know. He knew he needed to know.

I knew it had taken him a while to come ask me, so I honored that, didn’t turn to face him, kept my hands moving slowly and methodically in the hot soapy water, asking him where he’d heard the word. “At school,” he said, his voice low. “A sixth grade girl at another school was raped, they said.”

My gut clenched, my throat ached, for the girl, for all the girls, and for my beautiful innocent boy, with his straight-as-a-stick toss of blond hair, his guileless eyes so much like my own mama’s, in their deep blue, in the way they looked on the world–all of it–with wonder and delight. My heart ached, because I knew I was getting ready to take away some of that innocence and awe, that I had to answer his question, and had to begin to expand what I’d already worked to teach him of respect for all others into an area of understanding that would reveal darkness and violence and pain and trauma as parts of the world, of this life, he loved so much.

I didn’t want to do it. I didn’t want to tell him.

I wanted him to know only Light and Love and Compassion. I didn’t want to be the one who revealed this darkness to my beautiful beautiful boy.

But I did. I explained it. I explained what rape was.

I explained the physical act of violence. I explained the emotional and psychological and soul scars it leaves. I explained that it was not about sex at its core (We’d already begun to talk too about the miracle and sanctity of sex as a way of expressing deep Love), but about power and violence and deliberate harm.

I explained the best I could to my child, my son, not even in middle school yet, about the respect he must show to everyone, especially to women, and elders, and children younger than himself. I explained that his sacred duty as a man, as a human being, was to protect those unable to protect themselves, and that, later, when he was a teen, a young man, a man, that that included young women who might make the bad choice of drinking too much, or find themselves vulnerable for other reasons, that then, even more, he had a sacred duty to protect, never ever to take advantage or to harm.

I spelled it out as I dried dishes, glancing back now and then to where he sat at the table behind me, the same table where he’d goofed and been, you know, nine, while we ate dinner. He nodded solemnly when I asked, “Does that answer what you wanted to know?”

He stood and slid the chair back in under the table, and said, “I’m gonna finish my homework now.”

“Okay,” I said, watching as he slipped quietly from the room. I folded the kitchen towel and hung it back into place, so small and normal a gesture in that moment that it felt surreal. I took my glass of iced tea from where it sat sweating on the table, walked out to the front porch, where my kids couldn’t hear me, and I cried, cried until I couldn’t cry anymore.

That night broke the mother’s heart in me. But I did it. Because as a parent, it was my duty, my sacred responsibility, as the mother of sons.

Years later, I would find out from my students that my sons, both of them, were, in fact, men who took that role of protector seriously, that they had both been known to step in and take care of young women who had imbibed too much, who found themselves in vulnerable positions. My sons themselves never told me. I heard it from grateful young women who told me and thanked me after. I asked my youngest son, that Manchild, once about it, and he shrugged it off, simply saying, “It’s what we’re supposed to do. Take care of people, right?”

Yes. Yes, it is.

silhouette of a mother and son who play outdoors at sunset background

Sometimes the Day is the Poem

“And remember to be kind

When the pain of another will serve you to remind

That there are those who feel themselves exiled

On whom the fortune never smiled

And upon whose lives the heartache has been piled….

Be aware of each other.

Take good care of each other.”

 

Daily Prompt <3 On Boys and Men

8 June 2016

This was one of my mama’s top favorite poems. I have so many memories of her reciting it, again and again. Thinking a lot lately about the sons I’ve raised, about the young men I teach, in a culture where there’s so little guidance, so many confusing messages, on what it means to be a man. 

Make art about boys, or about what it means to be a man. 

 

Daily Prompt <3 On Mothers and Making Home

7 June 2016

My sweet daughter Lia, a brand new mother to an amazing baby boy Max–I call him Little Star–is beautifully maneuvering her way with Love and tenderness through the new dance of parenting, and marriage as a parent, and her own professional work.

Another sweet young mother I know, one of the daughters of my heart, is in the process of making a new home for her two little ones, having made the courageous decision to leave a marriage that wasn’t working or healthy, for her or her babies.

So I watch them in awe, as my own son used to say, “like we were just us, a crew on our own little pirate ship!”when his brother and sister and he and I were in the same place, me a mom making a home for us[image error]

How these young women astound and inspire me[image error] how I admire them

Make art about mothers, or about the daily rituals that go into making a home. 

Art by Katie m. Berggren

 

 

 

 

Daily Prompt s Dear ;-)

6 June 2016

I have a special affection for deer, for many reasons. I sit out on my little stoop and they slip like shadows from the woods, all velvet eyes and dancer feet, and they let me enjoy their company, their beauty, as they browse and graze through the section of the yard I leave wild just for them, what my kids call ‘Deer Diner.’ I planted them a persimmon tree there in that corner a couple of years ago, and I leave them three cups of corn daily[image error] paying my rent for sharing this little wooded four acres that their kind occupied long before my house was built. I love them more than I can articulate. Their presence brings me into a place of peace like no other animal. I think they understand this :-) 

Make art about deer. Or about what in nature brings you peace. 

Monday Must Read! Michelle Reale: Birds of Sicily

This week meet Michelle Messina Reale, author of four collections of poetry including Birds of Sicily, and The Legacy of the Sidelong Glance: Elegies. She won the Twin Antlers Prize for poetry, along with poets Meg Tuite and Heather Fowler. The winning manuscript, “Bare Bulbs Swinging” was published by Artistically Declined Press in the 2014. She is also one of the authors in the collaborative anthology Shut Up/Look Pretty. Her work has been published in Verbsap, 3711 Atlantic, Underground Voices, Moondance, Lily, Philadelphia Poets, Yellow Mama, Unfettered Verse, Grey Borders, La Fenetre, and others. Michelle is an Associate Professor at Arcadia University. She has twice been nominated for a Pushcart Prize. She conducts ethnography among African refugees in Sicily. Her Italian-American way of life is a prominent source of her research, as well.

She blogs about many of her experiences and topics of research at http://www.sempresicilia.wordpress.com

Buy Michelle’s Beautiful Books!

Birds of Sicily

Praise for Birds of Sicily

Birds of Sicily is an exploration into the geography of proximity. Dipping relentlessly and empathically into the “shadow of lack,” Reale unravels travel to reveal the “life of hard work and paradox” that links us all.—Cameron Conaway, Author of Malaria, Poems

Michelle Reale’s Birds Of Sicily is an outstandingly powerful poetry collection which has personal resonance for me due to our shared Sicilian background. In these wonderfully written poems, Michelle explores themes of migration and finding one’s place in a new, unfamiliar world and culture. Not much literature is written on the Italian-American experience and Reale’s work is a most welcome contribution to that end. This is a work you will come back to again and again.—Julian Gallo, Author of Breathe

Michelle Reale fashions lines that bite and burn. The delicate yet fanged poetry in Birds of Sicily draws from the depths of history and blends voluptuous landscapes with raw depictions of human fragility. Weaving and blending together various poetic forms and structures, the language of each piece sings. This collection, both universal and deeply personal, remains with the reader long after they’ve turned the final page.—Janie Cannarella, Editor-in-Chief, HOOT Review

 

The Legacy of the Sidelong Glance: Elegies

Bare Bulbs Swinging

Shut Up/Look Pretty

 

Read More from Michelle Online

https://mockingheartreview.com/current-issue/michelle-reale

http://www.thrushpoetryjournal.com/november-2012-michelle-reale.html

http://wickedalicezine.tumblr.com/post/86509383189/two-poems-by-michelle-reale

http://boneorchardpoetry.blogspot.com/2012/04/michelle-reale.html

http://www.wordriot.org/tags/michelle-reale

http://www.connotationpress.com/fiction/1268-michelle-reale-fiction

http://www.undergroundvoices.com/UVRealeMichelle.htm

 

Inteviews

https://anewlookonbooks.wordpress.com/2016/02/18/february-writers-feature/

https://jmwwblog.wordpress.com/2010/04/30/interview-michelle-reales-interiors/

http://www.smokelong.com/smoking-with-michelle-reale/

http://thebirdsisters.blogspot.com/2011/05/introducing-paul-elwork-and-michelle.html

 

Happy Reading!

xo

Mary

Special Sunday Call for Submissions: HeartWood

HeartWood reading now for our October issue! 

Seeking poetry, fiction, and nonfiction! Also seeking profile & interview proposals for our Appalachian Arts section! 

Submission Guidelines Here! 

Daily Prompt <3 Out in the Field

5 June 2016

“In a field /I am the absence/of field.”~Mark Strand

Make art about absence, about being out in the field, about who you are in the field. 

 

Daily Prompt <3 What I Wish For You

4 June 2016

It’s a John Denver morning. 

“If I had a wish that I could wish for you, I’d make a wish for sunshine all the while.” 

Make art about what you wish for someone else. 

Friday Call for Submissions Love!

Crab Fat is Now a Monthly Journal!

Deadline: Rolling

 

“Crab Fat Magazine is reading for our September & October issues! We’re currently accepting literary fiction, poetry, flash, creative nonfiction, transcribed interviews, screen/stage plays, book reviews, & visual art. Crab Fat is interested in eclectic queer, feminist, punk, hybrid, experimental, awkward, & nonlinear work. Be sure to review our website & past issues to get a sense of what we’re publishing. Crab Fat is an online monthly with a “best of” print anthology featuring 25 pieces released each June.

Please visit www.crabfatmagazine.com for complete submission guidelines.”

Note: from Crab Fat’s Guidelines

“We do not accept email submissions. If you send us email submissions, we will delete them, unread. We use Submittable.”