At thirteen, I screamed,
“You’re disgusting,”
drinking your coffee from a saucer.
Your startled eyes darkened with shame.

You, one dead leg dragging,
counting your night-shift hours,
you, smiling past yellowed,gaping teeth,
you, mixing the eggnog for me yourself
in a fat dime store cup,

how I betrayed you,
over and over, ashamed of your broken tongue,
how I laughed, savage and innocent,
at your mutilations.

Today, my son shouts,
“Don’t tell anyone you’re my mother,”
hunching down in the car
so the other boys won’t see us together.

Daddy, are you laughing?
Oh, how things turn full circle,
my own words coming back
to slap my face.

I was sixteen when you called one night from your work.
I called you “dear,”
loving you in that moment
past all the barriers of the heart.
You called again every night for a week.
I never said it again.
I wish I could say it now.

Dear, my Dear,
with your twisted tongue,
I did not understand you
dragging your burden of love.

…"Betrayals" by Maria Maziotti Gillan, Paterson

Recently, I was told that I have a "blue collar mentality."  What a wonderful thing to have, especially as the great writing of New Jersey often issues from that stream.  I have been pondering, though, what, exactly, the expression means.  Sure, the term "blue collar" itself refers to laborers at the turn of the last century who wore blue shirts to work, non-management types who built everything we are standing or sitting on right now.  People who wear  uniforms -cops, nurses, firefighters.  Some had more education than others did, but they still worked with their hands and brains to get things done.  Nobody made them coffee; nobody handed them their schedule at the beginning of the day.  What, then, is the mentality of a person like this?
I am still trying to get it.  I guess it means that I don't think like a rich person, that I have no sense of entitlement or that I am owed anything.  Everything a blue collar person gets, she gets by working.  Maria Maziotti Gillan knew that about her father; she knew it about all the Italian-Americans in her working-class neighborhood in Paterson.  She knows it now and it still informs her newest publication The Girls in the Chartreuse Jackets.  In these pieces, women who have earned their joy get to celebrate it.

Today's Writing Prompt:

Describe your working mother, father, husband, wife, as that person enters the door of your home when returning from a day of work.  What are the motions?  What weight is lifted?  What weights are loaded on?  What happens first before anything is said?  What is your role in this person's arrival?

Keep reading and writing,

Maureen

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