Wild Little Things

This is how my day began

A moment of brevity. Or insanity. Call it what you will. 

This morning we woke to a blanket of heavy wet snow. School was delayed for two hours. 

Two of my children were upstairs and clogged the toilet because apparently it requires an entire roll of toilet paper each to take care of things. Whatever. The plunger and I are well acquainted. Except it didn't unclog and the water level rose dangerously close to the top of the rim. I ordered everyone to keep out of the bathroom for the time being. 

I returned downstairs to my cup of coffee and freshly baked scone and gazed at the glittering tree tops. Meanwhile, the two perpeptrators decided it would be funny to flush the toilet again on purpose so it would flood onto the floor. 

Cue sound effects. Mother swears and screams wildly for ten minutes. Children cry. 

The older child says later, after my eyes stopped glowing red, "someday you will laugh about this." I'm hardpressed to see the humor here, but I think it's good to perserve the moment--to record it so I won't forget, years from now, the fullness of my parenting experience. 

I must now go santize my bathroom floor. I hope your day didn't start, well, quite so shitty. 

PS - There will be no picture to accompany this post for obvious reasons. 

I will wait and you will go

I'm writing a collection of poetry about motherhood. I'm sharing the rough cuts here. This is # 4 in the series. #1 and #2 and #3 are here.  

Together you climb the steps of the school bus. 
The mechanical doors close you tight inside and you ride away. 
Will I ever see you again? 

I tuck inside the house. I sip my milky coffee and drink up the silence. 
Meanwhile the cold rain beads up on the window screen. 
I tap the keys of my computer. 
It’s curious how you can feel happy and lonely all at once--
how you can drift around while sitting still

I imagine one of you on the playground, cast off in a corner
while the other is inside giggling with a friend
I hold my beating heart in one hand 
then put it back where it belongs and continue sipping coffee

You feel lost to me when I can’t see your smile
Then again it feels like you are finding your own good way
and that’s all I ever want for you

Whatever you are doing, even if you are lonely,
the world is yours to discover, all on our own
we will move apart and come together 
over and over 

I will wait and you will go 
I will wonder how you are 
Then I will sip my coffee and listen to the March wind relinquish the last of winter
I will pay to attention to how life shifts and continues

And remember, this world, is also mine to discover

What is Bliss?

I ask myself, what is bliss? 

Sleeping late into the morning under a heavy cover of blankets. Chocolate cake with thick icing and a glass of cold milk. Complete solitude: a vacume of silence. Running in a flurry of light snow. Finding your soul mate. But what then if they die? Horseback riding on the beach. Alone for as many hours as it takes to finish a really good book. Floating on your back in a sapphire blue ocean. Downward dog. Tree pose. The swirl of a baby's tiny fingerprint. Summer. A stranger saving your child's life. 

What else? What is bliss that's not attached to a specific experience? Does that exist? Knowing oneself? Letting peace fill up all the lonely places? Feeling called to a higher purpose? Letting go? "To make your heartbeat match the heartbeat of the universe," as Joseph Campbell says? 

Bliss is a million things and nothing at all.

I'm listening to the rain and reading poetry and wandering around in my mind. I'm trying to understand less. 

Tell me, what is bliss to you?

Mother Knowledge

"We better take good care of this baby sister when she comes," my son said to me yesterday. It seems I know less what that means now. 

I've done it three times. 
Each one the birthing gets easier.
And the mothering gets harder. 

Well I know how to make fluffy pancakes and make a messy ponytail and how to apply a batman band-aid so it heals with extra superhero power. 

And I'm good at the baby stuff: swaddling, infant in one arm scooped like a football while I cook dinner, breastfeeding (well that's always been hard in the beginning but I know how to endure--it's one thing I was never willing to quit--and I used to be a quitter). 

But the important stuff. The heart and soul stuff. I don't know.

I'm not a happy pregnant person. I'm swollen and have headaches and eat strange things my body doesn't really want but it does so I eat it. I'm tired all the time. People say I'm glowing, but I promise it's the blush. I don't walk around rubbing my belly and marveling at the beauty of creating life. I'm too pissy for that. 

I wait for the good part. When the baby slips from my womb and wails, slippery and wild, rooting me in the primal experience of motherhood--when I have no time to think. Instead I let out a tiny howl. I don't think anything. I just feel what I know. I feel the universe tied to my heart, and then it's slipping through my legs like silken thread. 

I know less now about how to mother but maybe that's good. Maybe that's what it's meant to be. Maybe I'm not supposed to know. Maybe I'm only supposed to listen to that little howl in my heart and let that be my guide.

Middle Place

I'm writing a collection of poetry about motherhood. I'm sharing the rough cuts here. This is # 3 in the series. #1 and #2 are here. 

I watch how she sits quietly doing her homework
her brown hair falling softly on her shoulders
her long fingers curved around the pencil 
and the way she scrunches her nose as she works out the problem in her head

I watch how she packs her backpack and stands at the door and waits
while the rest of us rush around, shouting and frantically tossing coats and shoes on our bodies
I watch as she helps her brother assemble his train set
the way she scoots next to him and says gently, “no it goes this way.”

I watch even when she thinks I’m not looking and see the place she inhabits
a place between an older sister whose needs are greater and a younger brother whose 
demands are louder

I see and I try and go to this tender place, to let her know she’s not alone,
to let her know her space fills me up
with all it’s softness and light and balance

She wasn’t first or last
and I hope she knows it doesn’t matter 

There’s no order to life anyway 
we all become who we are meant to be 
it doesn’t matter where we begin or how we end up
it only matters how we are right now

Advice for my children

I know nothing. Words come to me. Sometimes it feels like the truth. Hopefully, I live these words better than I write them. 

Live from your own center. Let your laugh be your secret power. Be quiet as often as possible and listen to the hum of the universe. It's not as hard to hear as you think.

Eat cinnamon rolls with sugary icing and papaya smoothies and tomatoes picked off the vine. Eat real food. Eat when you are hungry, stop when you are full. That's the only diet you will ever need. 

Do less, not more. Want what you want, not what others want. Don't spend too much time trying to figure out life. Stand where you are and live.

Climb trees, do cannonballs, run fast, even when your mother is barking into the wind, "be careful." Don't worship anything or anyone. God, the whole universe, is within you. 

Look in the mirror and say, "I love you," whenever you are tempted to think otherwise. Mean people suck, so don't be one of those people. 

Do scary things. Catch a garden snake in a bucket and release it someplace else. Watch it slither away. 

When life gets hard, do what you have to do. Remember your secret power. Know when to fight and know when to surrender. 

When a friend is sad, don't be sad for them, be sad with them. See the world as others see it. Then you will see it more clearly. 

Live the biggest, fullest life you can. Love, forgive, laugh, cry, dance. 

One year and 39 days...

The goal is to live with godlike composure on the full rush of energy, like Dionysus riding the leopard, without being torn to pieces. - Joseph Campbell

***

It's been one year and 39 days since Julia's transplant, and I still feel like I'm standing at the edge of a rocky cliff. Below me is a stormy black sea that is both breathtaking and terrifying. a cliche? I stand with the wind blowing through me. 

On Tuesday we saw the oncologist. All of Julia's tests are normal. She is healthy. Can I say the word "cured" yet? On the drive home, the stormy sea quieted for a moment. I felt hopeful again. We talked about the future. We planned a big celebration for her five-years of remission. Am I allowed to dream of that day? Isn't that my job as her mother? To dream for her future like it's my own. It is my own. Without her, I'm not me.

Today, I'm eighteen weeks pregnant. It's another girl, and I can finally feel her tiny drum beats in my tummy.   When I saw those pink lines on the pregnancy test back in November, I was crestfallen. I felt guilty and selfishly resentful. I wanted a fresh start for Julia and for my family. No, I wanted it for me. Most of all, I didn't want to take the chance again. I didn't want to love anyone else. Now there's even more to lose. 

I know: this is the thing about life. There's also more to gain. I'm back on the edge of that cliff. The sea is wild and the view is beautiful. If I'm lucky I will get to see all the beauty without ever falling into the darkness for too long. But if I fall, I'm lucky too. There's something down there waiting to catch me. 

The future? Who knows.

Everything seemed clear in the hospital. My purpose absolutely certain. Being a mother never felt more holy. Then we came home and stayed home, away from everyone and everything and all the germs but also from the regular world. It was good and bad. Julia began to heal. I thought that meant I would heal too. I was wrong. I held it together for two-and-a-half years. I began a slow unraveling.

Fear isn't always a waste. It can move you away from yourself and closer to the thing you fear losing. But ultimately it tricks you into clinging to one version of the future. That's the waste. 

You can't ever remove yourself from the fear of losing a child, especially when you come as close as I did. So I talk myself out of looking ahead. I remind myself that there are many versions of the future. I'll never know what it looks like until it meets me in the current moment. 

I will stick to what I do know. I know the people I love are what matter most. I know my time and attention are the greatest gifts I can offer them. I know a walk under a starry sky will give me more joy and peace than any item I could ever purchase from a store. I know unconditional love isn't always easy to offer but it's the only thing worth giving. So the truth heals. The future? Who knows. 

image via pinterest

Why I Stopped Writing

I stopped writing because I was depressed. Or maybe I was depressed because I stopped writing.

I stopped writing because I was worried that my story was also Julia's and I didn't, and still don't, want to violate sacred boundaries. I want her story to be her own. I want that for all of my children. I don't want every detail of their daily lives exposed on a blog--even if the events are pure and innocent. It's a personal decision. All mothers who write, have to find what works for them. 

I stopped writing because I was sick of the past and scared of the future. I didn't know what to say about either.

So I stopped. I erased my previous blog because nothing felt like the truth. I wiped away the words. Gone. a desecration or letting go? But the story remained. I started to feel separate from myself. A different person. Unhappy. I've never felt like that before. That's what happens when a storyteller stops telling stories. It's like air being sucked out of a room. 

I've tried to figure out how to tell a different story--about a different me--not the mother part of me. I can't. It's what I am. Call me a hundred different things but being a mother is the air I breathe. 

I'm navigating this part carefully: the telling what is wholly mine and what is wholly theirs. Of course, really our stories are woven together. The question: what belongs here. Now I understand. Sorting it all out. This is the storyteller's obligation and privilege. 

I Held You Brand New In My Arms

I held you brand new in my arms
and wondered where did you begin?
a million years ago we danced together like snowflakes in a storm
then we fell like stars and waited for the future to arrive
like a crocus in spring
I thought it would be easy loving you
your hazel eyes were blue then
your needs simple
but everything changes
and now we are a tangle of joy and messy love
yet I am inept 
you get me more than I get you
I want to walk for just one day in the solitude of my life before
except If I was there I would go racing right back to you
with my arms flung wide
clamoring for the chaos and mess and noise 
because now is where everything is complicated and scary
but worth so much more
I held you brand new in my arms
and wondered how I would be your mother
and you looked at me with those eyes and said I already was 

image via pinterest