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Definition of “Confation“
“….something that’s quite personal,
but liberating having written about both.
“To bring together: meld or fuse; to combine
(two variant texts, for example) into one whole.
I kid you not, boy did this thought intrigue me,
and so I wrote and titled my current poem “Conflation”—
something that’s quite personal,
but liberating having written about both.”
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emmett wheatfall
October 2011, for dVerse

A “Conflation” effort: 
Life:  What Happens When You Are Making Other Plans

 When I was young,
time stood still.
Days sometimes
felt like years.
Now, that I am
in my twilight years,
some days seem like
they have sped by
and suddenly a month
or year has passed…
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Early motherhood
was such a happy time,
watching the children grow, …
seeing miracles every day.
Never realized that
as time went by that
worries with older children
made the miracles
less obvious
to me as I tried
to deal with the unknowns
of teens, and adults.
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Most people LOVE
the summer months,
I was a working mom,
and worked
a couple of blocks from home.
Every time I heard a siren,
I worried it was for my house.
Summer activities,
going to the beach, camping,
was not something
my birth family did..
nor table games or travel.
(but I did learn to play
card games in grade school:
poker, canasta, double canasta,
and a few others,
from friends whose families
had  “different values” !
I listen with envy
 as others tell of fond memories
with their families
and how they loved summer
and summer was too short
instead of seemingly
forever and a day.
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Teenagers…Foolish me…
I thought raising kids
would get easier, and not harder !
People laughed
and told me
I hadn’t experienced anything yet!
It IS interesting to watch
how others seem to breeze thru
the trials and tribulations
of their children as teens
relating to what they were like
when they were young.
They know what normal is
…I had unreal expectations….
afraid if I misbehaved,
I’d be out on the street
or disowned…
I guess they are
 one in the same.
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And, being the parent
of two adult children isn’t
 the skate in the park
I thought it would be. 
I thought,  foolish me,
it would be basking
 in the glow of grandchildren,
a leisurely dealing
with children’s joys …HA!
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Parallels of how I lived,
my life with my parents…
distant, private,
not sharing, didn’t work for me…
but it did for them…
no sharing of the tough times,
gave them a false sense of security,
I realize now. 
I don’t have to worry
about a false sense of security
with one of my children,
 and with the other,
I always wonder if their life
is as smooth as  I’m lead to believe…
two teenagers can’t be all roses
this day and age.
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Despite my thoughts
of having the “perfect” life
and “perfect” children,
it has all turned out…
my children are perfectly fine
and good parents themselves.
I wonder if they think
of how they thought life
would be
and how life is what is happens
when you are making
other plans.
======================
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This was my first attempt at writing a “conflation” poem…sigh.
You can see why I shifted gears ☺.
.
 As I was making my egg salad sandwich which is soft,
I realized that it needed something crisp…
crisp tortilla chiips did the trick.
.
A hamburger the same, soft,
I like the crispness of potato chips here for a crunch.
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Ice must be cold and hard,
warm ice is water, whether outside
or in your glass.
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