The Song of These Streets

Thursday, July 21, 2011

Long Days and Short Years: Life as a Stay-at-Home-Mom

“The Days Are Long and the Years Are Short --Stay-at-Home Moms and Sex Workers.” No, I am not a sex worker, but I had to laugh when I read this chapter title in Tina Fey’s memoir Bossypants. I do know that daily life as a stay-at-home mom, particularly a single one, is HARD. Wait here a moment while I look up synonyms of hard so I don’t bore you with redundancy in this post....

Ok, I’m back.

If you are a single stay-at-home parent, you know how difficult it is to spend 24 hours of every day of every week of every month taking care of a tiny human being who wholly depends on you for food, love, diaper changes, entertainment and education. You know what an arduous task ANYTHING becomes when you have a 21 pound 11 ounce little one attached to your hip and pulling your hair. Showering is basically impossible (or is my baby boy the only one who screams as if he’s just lost his mother once I step behind the curtain?). Eating? It’s complicated, to say the least. Every chore that I found frustrating to make time for before having a baby (e.g. cleaning the living room, washing and folding laundry, checking emails and pooping) has become that much more irksome to complete while Equis is awake. Let me tell you, I thank God for the Kindle: Equis can no longer pull my books’ pages apart before my very eyes! ...

READ MORE HERE!

Friday, July 8, 2011

On Being A Single Mom

I told my therapist a few weeks ago, “I HATE being a single mom!” After a few moments of silence, I added, “It‘s hard,” and my therapist thanked me for my honesty.

My honesty? I was surprised by her reaction to my confession. She wasn’t going to throw stones at me for admitting that, as much as I love my son, I am depressed with my current state of motherhood? She wasn’t going to report me to ACS for neglecting to read to him every day? ...

Read more here at my NEW AND IMPROVED SITE.

Also, follow me on Twitter @XAMaldonado

Tuesday, June 21, 2011

CHECK OUT MY NEW SITE!!! Mom Blog, Poetry Blog & More!

Dear Followers,

As you may have noticed, I have been MIA for about a year and a half... ever since I discovered I was pregnant in January of 2010. Well, my son is now 10 months old, and I have returned to writing with an all new website at www.xiomaramaldonado.weebly.com. Check it out now!

My site features a MOM blog, Poetry Blog, Photo Gallery and Parent Freebies. READ IT! LOVE IT! COMMENT!

Also, you can now follow me on Twitter: @XAMaldonado

I will love to hear your thoughts about my latest work. It's been a long time; and I have missed my writing/reading community. Thanks so much for your support.

Sincerely,
Xiomara

Wednesday, May 18, 2011

Bedside Sojourns

A nurse wags her finger in my mother’s face:
“Do you know what your father did?”
(Grandpa had ripped the IV from his arm last night
and slunk to the bathroom bleeding.)

Her chastising words - “Young immune systems
cannot combat death!” then chase me into the elevator
and out on to First Avenue’s black-speckled streets.

I study the stroller canopy while I walk, fighting to replace
the nurse’s scolding eyes with those of a proud man smiling
as his great-grandson touches his shaking hand.

“You're my favorite grandpa.”
“I’m your only.”

I am not there when he gasps he cannot breathe,
when residents rush a crash cart to his body.
I am not there until later, when one uncle cracks
jokes as he cries, another talks of sleep and work,
and the last insists we move Pop to the Upper East Side.
My mother consults her brothers before she decides
to sign to let the doctor prep his neck and put in lines.

We wait where the carpet is dull and the Bible passes
from hand to hand. We glare at the black television,
its Out of Order sign and at nurses’ aides who talk
loudly into their phones, excitedly slipping green
bills into the vending machine.

Two weeks later, in yet another ICU waiting room,
my son woos visitors with his lamp-like eyes
and his toothless giggle. He blows raspberries
from an oblivious mouth; and, as a magician
finds flowers in a sleeve, his coos cull sorrow
from our brows and wake our dormant laughs.

Soon it is my turn to sit at Grandpa's bedside.
I pass through automatic doors, then white bed
after occupied bed until I reach his threshold.

His thinly veiled chest inflates… collapses;
and between his teeth, a piece of yellow plastic lies
as still as a tree frog in hiding.
I had forgotten growing up means
the people I love get older too.

My mother has taped photographs of us to the wall.
In one my grandfather grins because it is his birthday.
He stands straight, his capable hands (that once counted
taxi fare change) gripping the top of an unseen cane.
Behind large glasses and below a New York
Yankees cap, his eyes crinkle for the camera.

I hold my grandfather’s swollen hand and slick back
sparse unruly hairs to kiss his sweating forehead.

I try to hide the heaving in my eyes
when a nurse asks me to leave
in order to switch his lifted side.

Copyright 2011 Xiomara A. Maldonado

Saturday, June 19, 2010

Top Online Reads & Sees From The Root

I know that I haven't written in several months, but I found these articles from The Root so interesting, I thought I'd share them with you. The Root describes itself as "a daily online magazine that provides thought-provoking commentary on today's news from a variety of black perspectives." Enjoy!

The New Middle Passage
By: Malika Saada Saar Posted: June 17, 2010
Think Abraham Lincoln freed all the slaves back in 1863? Think again. And then get angry. Very, very angry.

On this Juneteenth, I am thinking of those who are not yet free. Most of them are girls. Born in America.
Every year in this country, between 100,000 and 300,000 children--most of whom are astonishingly between the ages of 11 to 14 years old-- are sold for sex by pimp-captors, according to government statistics. ...

Photo courtesy of ThinkStock.com

What Will Happen to Juneteenth?
By: Erin Evans Posted: June 18, 2010
Gen Y seems less than enthused about the day that slaves in Texas found out they were free. How will Black Independence Day fare in 2050?

"So how do you celebrate Juneteenth?" I asked my Twitter friends a few weeks ago. After a dead-tweet silence, I retweeted myself for emphasis. Even then, just a handful of my 300 or so Twitter friends responded with a few half-baked answers. "Go to some crappy festival," one Californian said. "I celebrate by doing nothing," said a childhood friend from Texas. ...

The Miseducation of Texas Schoolkids
By: Afi-Odelia Scruggs Posted: May 26, 2010
There's a reason why Carter G. Woodson established a Negro History Week in 1928.

See, a bunch of guys needed something to do in 1865 and 1866, right after the Civil War. It wasn't like they could go back to their plantations; Northerners had seen to that. So these good ole boys amused themselves by dressing up in sheets and riding through the countryside pulling pranks. Just good, clean hijinks, until they discovered their antics terrorized former slaves. Then, things turned naughty and nasty. But in the beginning, the Klan was just a social club. ...

Single-Minded: Sending My Mom Love on Father's Day
By: Helena Andrews Posted: June 18, 2010
No one can be both a 'mother and a father' to their kids. I'm so glad that my mom knew this.

I don't get those single women who say they've had to be ''the mother and the father'' to their kids. Nobody can be two people. Not even Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde could pull it off, and they had mad science on their side. Thing is you're either someone's mother or father, the two roles are mutually exclusive for a reason. ...

Florida Christian-School Teacher Fired for Premarital Sex
By The Buzz Posted: June 14, 2010

Fresh from our "Wow file," a former fourth-grade teacher at Southland Christian School in St. Cloud, Florida, was fired for conceiving several weeks before getting married. Oh, the shame -- getting pregnant by your fiance a few weeks before the actual marriage. ...

The Myth of Black-on-Black Violence
By Natalie Hopkinson Posted: June 16, 2010
As we head into another long, hot summer, the media -- and black folks -- need to retire this loaded term.

This year's Black History Month was a particularly bloody one in Shelby County, S.C. Sergio Leary, Ja'cole Wilson, Karon Barrow and Leon Thurman Jr., all young people in their 20s, were all shot dead, according to local news reports.

The Shelby Star's analysis of the burst of violence, hit on all the usual crime reporting clichés: ''black,'' ''at-risk youth,'' ''subcultures that don't value'' life. And then, there's the clincher. ''Despite overall crime numbers falling in recent years, black-on-black [emphasis added] violence remains a prevalent issue,'' the newspaper reported. ...