Suzanne Palmieri's Blog, page 3
June 13, 2013
Goodby WordPress…. hello blogger
Good BY WordPress….
June 11, 2013
Hello Blogger! I've missed you so.....
June 3, 2013
Because you saw me
And if there were a truer shade of blue,
it wouldn’t be the me I see inside.
For all the moments that I gave away,
my rage laced sorrow hid and softly lied.
It’s only when I look at me through you,
my gypsy soul unhindered in the blue.
And roses bloom under my work worn feet.
My hair falls down my back, not gray at all.
May 19, 2013
Zipper
He was visiting. An odd word to describe coming home. We were preparing to go for a walk.
Standing in the middle of an enormous foyer, I struggled to zip up my brown corduroy coat. The hood’s white fur lining making me an Eskimo. The zipper was a challenge to chubby, three year old hands. Angry hands. Hands that didn’t want to be stuffed into pom-pommed mittens. Hands that didn’t want to hold a stranger’s hand.
“Hey Little Bit, let me help you with that.” His voice boomed in our lady house.
“No. I can do it.” I turned away. I wouldn’t cry for him.
Zip please zip please zip please zip please
She floated down the grand staircase, a movie star in boudoir clothes. I could smell her before she rounded the bend at the landing. I looked into her face. Into the smile my presence couldn’t paint. His smile. “Help me?” I asked her.
He grabbed me, and harshly zipped up my coat. He held my wrist and took me for that walk god damn it let your mother rest.
And I was too little to know they were trying. To angry to feel the love.
“You killed the Eskimo,” I said.
May 15, 2013
A Funny Thing Happened on the Way to Myself….
Hey, boy.
You. Handsome Mister. Sit down for a second. I have to tell you something.
I’m here to tell you this funny thing that happened.
Seventeen years ago you collided quietly into my bruised solar system . Remember? Neither of us wanted a relationship. We were not each other’s type. I had a kid, a life, a plan. You had… a car. Sunglasses. Blue Puma’s. You had cool.
Oh, man. How I wanted you. And I wasn’t hiding that from you, I was hiding it from me. That summer, it was so hot. Remember? You drove me to Fordham and then I was stuck in the Honda because the alarm wouldn’t open the doors. In the White Castle parking lot. What a night. We were breaking that thing off, that pseudo relationship. I HAD PLANS. No man needed. No ball gown, no prince, no fairies. Hard working Suzanne with a chip on her shoulder and a kid to raise.
You left your t-shirt there that night. And the next day, when you were gone… I picked it up and held it to my face. Cried into it for a good hour. Saw a roach, freaked out and went to the hardware store with my baby for something non toxic get rid of them. I thought I was going to die.
You came back mid week. Surprised me with a bottle of Champaign and a kiss. No promises.
Seventeen years. An adventure, for sure. And still…. I need to tell you something. God, Bill… I love you.
I never even knew how much until just recently. You know why? Because I wasn’t myself. I left her back there in Six Year Old Land. A NEVERLAND of sorts. I ran. I was running, babe. All these years. The books brought her back. I broke in two. It is only when we are broken that we can begin to recognize our own beauty. I tried to hold that last string of the NOT ME together for years until I cracked up for good.
So, here’s the thing: This funny thing happened a few months ago. I woke up early on a weekend and you were still asleep. I moved toward you so that I could be close to you, feel you breath. The air was full of sleepy haze and moonlight morning glow. It occurred to me, at that very moment that it was you.
Oh babe. It was you. All along.
I may have not known me but you did. You always knew HER. The me that was she. You loved her, that girl you saw. I suppose she loved you from the start. And now that she’s here with me… she whispers to me late at night (she sounds like cicadas and candlelight giggles) how you took care of her. How you made her laugh, and understood her crazy. She told me lightening doesn’t scare her anymore.
Thank you for keeping her safe while I was on the run.
It’s so funny the things we learn when we finally stop running.
May 7, 2013
The Mother Crush
It isn’t fake. It isn’t shy or timid. It is heavy and sweet and pure. I have a crush on my children. They move around me, gravitating to my side and there’s a lightness to the tether between us that isn’t like what I remember.
The oldest is full of words. Full of words bursting out of perfect lips and sea green eyes and peach fuzz ears. Her words are true and she is strong. She is everything good I never was. Beautiful and vain, she dances on the ocean now and loves wisely. I am better for knowing her.
The middle girl is full of joy and exploration. A follower of rules and loyal too. Her father’s girl. She’s careful with her love. She’s quiet when quiet is necessary. She’s a good friend and natural nurturer. Recently she lost two teeth. She danced away from me in IKEA… she was spinning up ahead, perhaps ten feet away and yet a world gone. She will be the one to dance away from me someday. I don’t remember when she left the sling. It seems so strange to see her now, my dark changeling, dancing ahead of me with two teeth gone and a world of opportunity ahead of her. It’s so hard to let them go… especially when we provide the platform for their flight.
And then there’s the baby. Mostly made of me, but with her father’s eyes. Tyrannical and abusive, she makes us laugh. I don’t miss her yet. She’s still too little to miss. Like an arm or a leg she extends out from me and we breathe in tandem. I don’t have to wonder where she is. Not like with the other two. I fully understand that they are mine, but where did the little versions go?
In the corner of my eye I can see them. The oldest is still running in Wooster Square with cherry blossoms in her hair and she is demanding, at three years old, that I call her Feline, which is not her name. Where is she? She is hiding, she must be hiding from me.
And the middle girl…she walked early and talked late. I was in Jamaica when she took her first steps. And then she wouldn’t stop running. But when she was tired, her little body would find mine and curve into me and her babiness was a solid thing. Or so I thought. It turns out that her littleness is as fleeting as the rest. Where is she? I lost her on the playground. One moment she was struggling to climb up the slide the wrong way, the next she is triumphant on top and her legs are so long, and she’s left her toddler self behind.
And this is why it’s more than love. This is why it is a crush. The crush of loss and gain and win and lose. The crush of missing them at the same time as yearning to see their lives unfold. This is how it is supposed to be. They end up the guardians of their smaller selves, and if we’re lucky, they might let us visit with them once in a while, late at night, when it’s important for a big girl to feel like she can be a little girl again.
My girls. Not one of them is a genius or prodigy. There is no ballerina, no concert pianist, no early reader. But they are good girls, kind to one another and kind to me. And the amazing part is that I get to borrow them from the world for a little while, these princesses of Morris Cove. What a lucky world it is, to have such fine young women in it.
*Repost. I will Repost it every year…. this one is for them. XO S*
May 5, 2013
April 23, 2013
And The Lost Witch, (me), FELL DOWN
Dear Lost Witches, Wandering Witches, friends and readers everywhere: Yesterday I received and email from a reader. It was forwarded from her daughter who is also reading THE WITCH OF LITTLE ITALY.
The way this transpired was magical. I was lurking visiting, the FB page of an author I love, and there was this woman who said she was excited to read my book. And her name? Suzanne. My name. So I commented on her post. Then? I found out her middle name is Marie! Like mine. But the thing that really threw me? (I mean, made me almost fall down…) was that she used the term “Batshit Crazy” which is a term in my novel that has become, somehow, a “catchphrase”. Only she hadn’t read the book yet!
After we discovered our similarities? Suzi sent me an email stating she couldn’t wait to read,only she’d bought the book online and was waiting for delivery. She said she’d gone to the store and bought another one. I said (feeling bad that she’d bought TWO books) “Give one to your mom! It’s a great mother’s day read!”
She did.
Her mother, Maggie Gara, read the book quickly and sent this message to her daughter. (Italicized portions are from the book! She quoted the book. I fell down the rabbit hole of happy)
Here is the letter:
Suzi,
I knew I would read the book you gave me. I knew I would finish it out of respect for you. But it was after reading these words (I memorized the page # – 16 at the time), that I knew I would be reading, not only because of a promise to you, but because I had to read the book.
“And what? Have you heard anything, seen anything strange?” asked Carmen, perking up even as her voice wavered. ‘It runs in our blood you know. I don’t have it, but these things … they can skip generations I guess.”
“What have you seen, Eleanor? Tell me!”
Come home.
’I don’t know what you’re talking about,’ she lied.
Come home.”
In that moment, with those words, I knew I would be traveling “home”. Because I had to.
Of course, throughout the book commonalities continued to occur. Mimi’s mother’s name: Margaret, like mine.
Then at the end when I discovered Itsy’s real name? Magic.
Author Suzanne and you, my very own dear, Suzanne. Commonalities of Christian names.
What is so strange is that Joe has always called me his “Sicilian witch” and I have always assumed that the gifts have come from that side of my family. Yet in the book Suzanne made it clear that the gifts are originally from the Irish side of Elly’s family. My mother never spoke of gifts or sight nor my Italian aunts or Grandmother. I didn’t really know the other family’s side of women well enough to hear of any gifts. My one girl cousin died when I was an infant and so I have no one of my own generation to learn from either. Trish doesn’t seem to have it.
After reading several books this year about the Irish and Scots, I think Suzanne has it correct. It is our Irish heritage which hold the key to the gifts. Amazing to learn that at my age.
I thought I knew what Itsy was going to do before there was even a hint of it in the book. But how she did it was so creative, I was amazed. This from a person who’s read over 700 books in the past 26 months — and many of them mysteries! The final chapters were filled with surprise after surprise and had me racing to the finish line like a child licking the drips from the cone before the ice cream melts away.
I FIND IT ALMOST IMPOSSIBLE TO BELIEVE THIS IS A FIRST NOVEL. WRITING WAS AN EASY FLOW OF WORDS. SO PROFOUND AT TIMES I HAD TO PUT THE BOOK DOWN TO COMPOSE MY EMOTIONS AND LET MY BRAIN PROCESS EVENTS.
MY MIND’S PICTURE OF THE TWO SISTERS SITTING ON THE GARDEN BENCH TOGETHER, PALMS UP, WAS SO POIGNANT. I STOOD THERE WATCHING. NOT WANTING TO LEAVE THEM.
ANOTHER MOMENT I PUT THE BOOK DOWN WAS WHEN ELLY FOLLOWED THE FEATHER, WHICH “FLOATED DOWN FROM THE SKY” AND DISCOVERED THE SECRET….
“Elly pulled the door open and —
This was the real memory. Not the route Mimi’d taken her into the attic to look for maternity clothes. An alternate route. But why was it so important? What was still lurking there, just around the corner?
Elly went through the small door, like Alice into the beautiful garden at the bottom of the rabbit hole.”
Then the next chapter went to Itsy out at the cottage with Mama. I thought I would go mad! A Mad Hatter mad! I put the book down and debated with myself about jumping forward, scanning pages for the answer. Cheating, if you will. I’d never done that! Never. For all the mysteries I’ve read during my lifetime, I’ve been an obedient reader. Following the author’s lead. But Suzanne built the suspense so well, that I was considering the unthinkable. Cheating!. I walked away from the book and debated with myself. Busying myself with the chore of moving clothes from the washer to the dryer, my conscience won out and I proceeded on the course carefully laid out by this talented writer. (Only because I promised you my totally honest commentary am I confessing to this horrid breach of patience.)
I could go on and on, of course. My childhood memories of the Bronx festivals brought to the forefront of my mind with Suzanne’s words. How easily I walked with Mimi, Elly, et al.. down the streets.
The book was not just a joy to read. An exciting story to thrill the blood. This book was an entry to my very soul, my very being. The characters are not like any person I have known, nor any person I have ever read about before. But they are friends whom I will think of often as I revisit the thoughts and the feelings their presence in my life provoke within me.
Thank you for sharing this incredible journey with me, darling daughter, just as we share the same blood that has sights and gifts coursing within us.
Please tell Suzanne she should be proud of her work, not because of the words of others, but because she must know, within her very being, this is special. She need not depend upon others for reassurance, her talent is clearly God given.
xoxox Mom
Thank you so much Maggie. And Suzi? You know…. Another Lost Witch, found. XO (published with permission from Maggie Gara)
You guys…. I am so honored. Thank you.
~The Lost Witch
April 18, 2013
A letter for the middle witch
Dear Tess,
It’s been crazy around here lately, hasn’t it? Every time I promise things will calm down, the opposite happens.
I know this isn’t your dream, baby. It’s mine.
I also know that out of the three of you? Out of all three of my darling girls, you feel my absence the most. You always have. And it’s not simply that I’m gone (working, traveling, etc….) it’s that I’m gone in my mind. That’s the problem. I live in my stories, my lesson plans, my promotion and websites and emails. “I’m working,” is a phrase you hear far too often. I know.
And you know it, too.
So, here’s the thing. I want you to know something else. The moment you were born, I began to breathe. (As I’ve said Rosy gave me life, you gave me breath, and Grace? She’s given me laughter)
I’ve watched you grow– your own person from the start. Quiet and serious. Creative and full of joy. You amaze me.
You’re growing up so fast, now. When I come home from work, you’re in your room. And sometimes I don’t even see you right away. You don’t wait for me anymore. And that’s how it should be.
But the other day? When I came running up the stairs calling your name…. you ran from your room and yelled “Mommy!” and I picked you up. I held you there. Just like when you were littler and never wanted to be out of my arms, not for a second. You never squirmed to be let down. You never reached for anyone else. I quietly coveted your preference for me. It made me feel so tall.
I need for you to know that nothing in my life could ever make me feel taller, or prouder, than that. No publishing contracts, or success. Nothing.
When you look at me? Sometimes I feel like I could never live up to the woman you see. Because to you? I’ve always been just right. Not too crazy, not too odd. Not scattered or thoughtless. Just right. And even now, you look at me like that —when I know and can feel your “Missing” of me. Your wanting me more, and it seems, I’m sure, that viewed from the high perch on which you’ve placed me? That I’m not there.
To be honest, I sometimes see that vision flicker. That’s not your fault. That’s part of growing up and seeing things the way they are. And at this moment, I’m more crazy than I ought to be. It’s true.
Still, when you put your Lady/Girl head in the crook of my arm, and fall asleep…I push your gypsy hair from your forehead and whisper to you… into your heart. Subliminal knowledge. “I am still here… I am always here… I will never leave you…. I am here….”
I am here. And you? You are so, so clever. Someday, maybe, you’ll understand all of this.
Until then, you are allowed to be mad at me. Bring me down a few notches. Because nothing you could ever do or be or say or want or need— could change the simple fact. I am HERE. Forever.
Mommy
