the new me

Meredith Winn Photography.

 

kinda sorta yes indeed ~ deep breath ~ jump in

float. swim. laugh.

this is the new me.

hi.

kneel before nature

there’s a story my grammy would tell all the time. you know how it is, how some stories become legends because they are told so often by our elders. i love how she told it, because it must have had a profound effect on her. me in my four year old-ness and she much much older than that.

i was four. much like my own son is now. and we had just moved from the west coast to the east coast. it was the beginning of my memory really. i mean, there are snippets here and there. a diaper changing table, a high chair and me feeding green beans to our dog, a hole in the fenceline in napa valley, the neighborhood pool, a dislocated shoulder, the orange VW bus with brown plaid curtains.

at four, the world began to feel solid. atleast in memory. people fit into their pegs, i was grasping the concept of time much like my own four year old is now: “mom, how much longer until it is tonight?”

it was sometime during this year of my memory that we were walking through new york city. my grammy was a walker. i come from a family of walkers. my grammy was a bostonian. i come from a family of new englanders. much of my memory is walking through boston with her and going back home for fluffernutter sandwiches. we never ate out. ever.

so, new york city. the smell of pretzels on street corners that mixes with truck exhaust. driving through a tunnel no matter where i am in the country and how old i become, will bring me directly to NYC in my mind. it’s all about the smells. when i was older it would become about the views as my brothers and i would lay like sardines in the back hatch of our datsun staring up at the skyscrapers as we whizzed through the city, i mean as fast as one little white datsun can go in a sea of yellow taxis.

maybe we had just moved and that’s why we were visiting. we often went for culture or museums or for that tiny shop that kids were not allowed in where my dad bought his stained glass supplies.

but it was St. Patrick’s Cathedral this day, during this visit. and i remember the steps and the steeple leading straight up. the feel of it being placed right in the middle of the city. something so old alongside something so new. we most likely went there for architecture and beauty. my grammy most likely went there to feel close to god. i really dont’ know.

the light from the candles made it feel magical to me. what i would give to tote my camera in this cathedral and photograph those memories now. 

my grammy would tell the story: that i walked up to the candles and knelt, put my hands together and bowed my head. she asked me what i was doing and i replied most honestly, “i’m praying to the pigeon.” because there before me was a stone dove. it all made sense to me then. and it still does now. it made her laugh and until i was 23 years old she told that story to me each and everytime i saw her.

i thought of this today because the sky was crazy and the air stood still with that eerie calm that texans refer to as the calm before the storm. when the sky turns just a little bit more green than you want, when you know somewhere possibly close by, there’s a tornado touching ground. and people all around you start sharing stories of windows bulging of hail hanging suspended in mid-air just seconds before rooftops are ripped off. just moments before the hair stands up on their neck and they think to grab ahold of a beam or post or whatever the fuck is around that is concreted into the ground as they scream “shit!!!!” and think for real that they might just this once get sucked up into a funnel cloud.

i thought of my four year old self because i was feeling like a kid conjuring up a bit of conversation in those moments of lunch break when i am not momma or teacher, but simply meredith. and i fumbled with my words because i always do, because really nothing much has changed since i was four and so very shy. and all the tornado talk had me all creeped out and needing to find some grounding and not think of all the lives i was currently responsible for being at work.

“i’m going on a walk. because it helps just to get away.” there’s a bit of chatter as the gate is opening and closing because it’s lunch time. there’s a curious look and a little bit of a smile like a secret was spilled or shared unknowingly.

“yes to photograph nature and trees and flowers.” this is who i am when i am not mother teacher older woman wishing the kids would nap already so she can go outside to take a breath and find her feet and walk and walk and walk

“i like to kneel before nature.” did i just say that outloud? yes because it’s true because when i’m lost in my lens when i dont’ see you watching me, that’s what i’m doing. you’ll find me crouching in the bushes or along the sidewalk with my camera jammed up in my face and i won’t even see you ride your bike past me smiling under your helmet as you cruise back to work because i’ll be lost searching for something beautiful.

and i’ll come away with an image that makes me happy in my own pagan way because really what i’m doing, still after thirty years, is praying to the pigeon.

vote hope

this is what spins my world. it fills my eyes with tears with such belief in the spirit of humanity. it takes my breath, this human experience. it’s such a beautiful thing. and i feel lucky to be standing near it, feeling the warmth of love it gives off as heat.

this hope.

this is what keeps me going.

we can do anything if only we believe.

what do you believe in?

how to have a beautiful day

wake up at 8am (that’s two hours of sleeping in!) the first thing you should hear upon waking is “let me give you a hug!” and “momma, what if the whole world were made of volkswagon buses?!”

sip hot chai and build with legos for four hours. listen to a young one tell stories of all his creations. the police boats, the trucks with skiis instead of tires, the amphibious trolleys that carry passengers on water… it goes on and on.

stay in pajamas until atleast noon.

organize your closet by moving all the winter clothes to the back and pulling all the summer clothes to the front (because in texas there is no real season called spring and it’s gone from rainy and 50 degrees to sunny and 85)

finally put away all the clean clothes that have piled up on the floor (because “hey momma? whenever there is a basket of clothes, i just want to dump it cause i’m a curious little kitty…”) vacuum your house. hang your collection of sewing threads in your sewing room (the second walk in closet) unpack four boxes from january.

make a huge pile of things to donate to goodwill. feel lighter because of it.

take a walk to check the mail and head down to the trail near your house. say outloud how lucky you are to live here, to simply walk out the door and be here. find out that the ‘rocky place’ is now pooled with water. watch the dogs splash. watch musicians create makeshift stages on rock plateaus. watch a hiker stop to collect enormous rocks to build sculptures with. watch him for a long time and get inspired. “hey momma, i want to do what that man is doing!”

see your little one bend over in surprise and come up smiling “hey!! a heart rock!” know that he is learning and watching and enjoying life too.

hike and hike and love your life.

carry your little one piggyback after three hours of hiking and a steep hill to walk back to the house. stop in the sunlight to take a photo of this most beautiful day. a day of reconnection. a day most needed. share the laughter and hear the sentiment when he tells you in your ear “hey momma. even when i’m grumpy i still love you.”

running water

there is a curtain between us and the sound of water in my ears. it brings us that space where words flow and drip and sometimes forcefully pulsate from the shower head, straight into my heart.

i’m in the shower when i hear his feet and his voice which i love so much. “mom? i have to poop.” he likes to announce it and he also enjoys the company. he requires it, actually.

“you can poop, i’m here in the shower.” i peek my head around the curtain rod and drips drop off my nose and fingertips. his barefeet dangle and he looks quizzical. “i can poop while you’re in the shower but don’t worry, i won’t flush.”

we discuss plumbing once again and marvel at its beauty. i once lived without running water. i marvel in the the beauty of a faucet.

“remember when daddy flushed when we were in the shower?” he’s remembering last year. it comes out at times like this when i’m ill-prepared. “remember i moved away from the water so it wouldn’t burn me?”

the conversation continues like this with him mostly talking until i see an opportunity, an open window and so i say “what else do you remember about when daddy lived with us at the old house?”

there was silence and the water ran. he doesn’t like these direct questions. and so i don’t often ask unless he leaves a window open like this for the breeze to blow in. he swings his feet pigeon-toed.

“you fighted alot.”

i dont’ know what i was expecting, but i know that i am often knocked back a step by his memories. i’m glad there’s a curtain between us. although he can see through me regardless.

“you fighted alot and i would come out and you wouldn’t stop.”

the water runs hot like tears. like truth straight from a four year old. i will never see through his eyes. i can only imagine.

“hey river? i’m sorry we fought so much. i’m so sorry we fought infront of you like that.”

“yeah.”

i turn off the shower.
i’m done.
he flushes.

“hey mom? can you wipe my bum?”

and so it goes.

the friday conversation continues sunday afternoon. after time spent away when he comes back to me with all those layers. we peel them back slowly while building legos and taking long chatty walks. he skips. so do i. i’ve missed him.

“i didn’t want you to fight with daddy.”
i didn’t want to fight with him either, baby. fighting didn’t make me feel good. it made me feel yucky. i like to think that we are both happier not fighting now living in separate houses. now you have two houses and a happier momma and daddy.

“why did you and daddy fight?”
sometimes people have a hard time getting along. we tried to get along but we couldn’t. and we ended up fighting too much.

“i didn’t want you and daddy to fight because it was too loud.”

i expect the blow-up. the explosion of sunday afternoon. it’s bright and beautiful and i want to shield my eyes from it, but my job is to help him through it. my job is to get over myself and my own insecurities. the place i don’t want to go to is the very place he must return to again and again until he sorts it out. i blindly guide him to someplace healthy.

and so it goes.

“So I will follow you wherever you go
If your offered hand is still open to me
Strangers on this road we are on
We are not two we are one

So you’ve been where I’ve just come
From the land that brings losers on
So we will share this road we walk
And mind our mouths and beware our talk
‘Till peace we find tell you what I’ll do
All the things I own I will share with you

If I feel tomorrow like I feel today
We’ll take what we want and give the rest away
Strangers on this road we are on
We are not two we are one”

~ Strangers by The Kinks.

34

so much can happen in a year. so much can stay the same. it’s ever fascinating to me.

today finds me 34.
how strange.
i feel just the same.
but very very different.

so here’s to then because it’s where i come from.
and here’s to now because it’s where i’m going.

photo and words

i opened my mailbox and found two copies of midwifery today magazine smiling back at me. something so full of beauty, that came to me just in time. it’s always the perfect timing even when i think it isn’t. even when i signed the contract and made final edits back in november, even when i knew it was coming. i didn’t know it was coming today.

thank you, universe.

i am not a midwife. nor do i want to be. they have the hardest jobs on earth. but i will do anything for my midwife, i’m an avid supporter and i’m a writer. and i’m just that cheesy that i wrote an essay for her and got it published in a magazine that she and all her midwife friends will see.

my insides are smiling.

it’s many things that give me that sense of fulfillment, but right now it’s my words in print. this is something i will never grow tired of seeing. and i think of the bitter and the sweet now when i see my name listed as ‘contributor’. i flipped to page 16 of the spring issue and saw my photo there as well. that was a first for me, photo and words! what a beautiful combination.

this is what i do. i know this now. it’s finally after all this time, becoming familiar to me. i ride the waves up and down, all the while getting green in the face from seasickness. i can’t keep the words from getting out anymore, nor do i want to. i cast my nets out while i’m riding the crest of the wave. i hope to catch something that won’t slip through the holes. most often it comes back to me full at just the right moment.

like today. a very good day.

widespread panic

the shower tiles are yellow and they’re slippery this morning. this morning of unbalance. when i wake up dizzy at 6am i think it’s lack of sleep and blame the cat. blame blame, that’s my game. i think it’s the ungodly hour and blame daylight savings. i stagger to the shower because it always makes me feel better. i’m conscious of my breathing when i put my hand on the tiles to steady myself. i am breathing deeply. my phone is on the counter just a foot away but i wish it could be glued to my hand. i wish i could never lose my grip.

and it starts to fade. i sit down and breath hard. i dont’ want to lose my grip. my son is in his bed asleep in new pajamas. ironically he slept through the night while my cat kept me awake all night. i don’t want to slip and crash his world. the visions come of me in the shower, of him finding me, of him being so little so scared so young and needing to be so brave so mature. it’s too much. the shower is not helping at all.

he wakes up crying and says he couldn’t move his legs. “it wasn’t a dream momma” he insists. he couldn’t move his legs and i wonder how will i do this. how am i doing this? this is too much and i’m too alone and he’s too young and i’m too close to hyperventilating or fainting and i blame it on blood sugar and ignore the nausea to shove protein into my system. cram it in. perk me up. please. this feeling has to go away.

i’m on my living room floor and he’s putting on his shoes. he’s wearing his new orange socks. they are long and he pulls them up way past his knees and tells me upon standing “these will protect me” because he’s wearing his firetruck shirt and he must be a firefighter with protective gear.

how am i doing this? how will i get through my day without breaking? i gotta drive. i gotta make it to the car.

and it flashes back to me, the need to drive. to be away and out in public. just like after his birth. safety in numbers. safety behind the wheel with thousands of other motorists on the roads around me. i am never alone when i’m driving through town. i’m safest in my car.

we step outside and it’s dark. i think it’s a joke. like i’m in a funhouse. it’s 7am and i understand it’s daylight savings. i am an intelligent woman. but it’s like the wires are crossed in my brain this morning. i’m completely disoriented like when i was in high school and found myself in the shower at 3am thinking i was late for school. only i was young then and laughed and went back to bed. i’m not so young anymore.

i stand and blink at the bottom of the stairs for a good two minutes. i look around and then fumble for my phone. i call the director at my school. “hey, what time is it? it’s 7am right?” i start walking. one foot infront of the other. she laughs on the phone. she knows me and my voice is off and i’m happy to be on the phone and just five minutes away. “i feel disoriented and all fucked up…”

ten minutes later i am sitting with two kids eating yogurt. certainly it must be the protein not the panic attack. certainly it can be fixed with food. it can be shoved down and dealt with later.

at 8am i head to the art studio to gather supplies for the day. i am alone and it feels like when the windows are open and unbalanced on the highway. when the wind makes a vibration that turns the car into a drum “woh woh woh” it’s too much for your head so you roll up the windows and the pressure is released and the buzzing stops.

it’s kinda like that. but i am alone in the studio and i need to sit down. i feel my feet in my shoes. i am on this earth. i lean forward and breath so deep my lungs hurt. this is just like how it was nearly four years ago. i am frozen in the vision. the vision is creating a physical and emotional state in my body. four years ago it was the vision of him as the four month old crying near my limp body, him not able to crawl but needing to nurse, needing nourishment and care during our sixteen hour days at home alone so far away from any other people and neighbors.

it’s not like the windows are down on the highway and i’m driving too fast. it’s more like the seven seconds that follow sucking down a shiny pink nitrous balloon. cold lips and hot ears that pound and echo “wah wah wah” when your peripherial vision begins to fade into a tunnel and you lay down to spin. but i’m not 23 i’m 33 and alot has changed over this decade. i am not who i thought i was. and i am scared.

i hold my head in my hands and cry. there is no containing it. and somewhere in me, in my logical brain i know that i am here right now. i know that i just read a book where she described a panic attack and i have a name for what i’m feeling. it is very real. and that is somehow empowering. i am not crazy as i was once made to think i was.

this is real and i pull from my resources between deep breaths, that book described her state and the advice she was given if it were to ever happen again. “go with it” move forward with the panic. see your body in the shower unconscious. see your son find you there. see his face. the look of confusion. hear the words you think he’d say “momma, why are you laying down? momma get up!” see the age leave him as he’s forced to become much older than he is. see it all and feel that sadness. go through it to become not frozen in it anymore. he would be so scared. he would be crying. he would shake me and get wet and maybe turn off the water. he would unlock the double locks and go outside? he would find a neighbor? does he know any neighbors? can i trust my neighbors? he would not know how to use the phone. he would be so scared and i am his mother and i have to be here for him. for always. to protect him from my own weaknesses.

i feel my feet are grounded in this art studio and my tears are hot behind my glasses. i move through it and see where i am right now. i’m at work. he might not be able to use the phone but they would call. they would come looking for me. this is more real than my vision.

i called my director from next door. i heard her phone ring through the wall. “i need a few minutes. but can i talk to you later?” we hang up and i sit and feel so much better. the nausea is still clinging and it will all day, to act as the reminder to take better care of myself, to make good on all those promises i make when i’m scared out of my mind.

later i talk to her and she understands. she hears me and shares her story from years ago. i find comfort in that. and she says the very thing that pulled me through. “if you didn’t show up to work i would know something was wrong and i’d come find you. you’d be okay and so would river because we’d be looking for you.” and i know this is the truth. and like a cloud of smoke… poof, it dissipates and i’m left with bleary eyes and a red nose. but i’m smiling.

it’s like a blur, this day. i’m tired, i’m spent. i broil a steak for dinner because i crave the red meat. and i begin the dinner conversation. “hey, remember on your firetruck movie what they tell you to do incase of an emergency? who do you call?” and we go through the motions with the houseline. i am empowering him as i am myself. he shows me the numbers. the 9-1-1. it’s a conversation that is smiling with curiousity yet it carries a serious undertone and he knows it. he knows it’s important.

seeing now, these past few weeks… i had felt it creep up on me. like a constant nag. getting through river’s sickness, i had said aloud “i’m the only adult in the house” it was the same ugly old nag that couldn’t be put to rest. it was rearing its head from four years ago.

after river’s birth a conversation began from the evening news. another dead bloated baby found buckled safely in the backseat of the car, forgotten in the texas heat all day long.

river was three months old.

he told me between drags on his cigarette, “shit mere.” he was so scattered. he was admitting. confessing, he knew it and i knew it. “i shouldn’t be left alone with him. what if my phone rings and i forget he’s there?” you never ever want to tell a new mother this. that was our first mistake.

i felt him hand it to me. cold hard and heavy, it was the weight of responsibility; of sole responsibility. it felt like a lead weight in my hands. it dropped me to the floor. and i struggled to carry it alone.

i was in the thrift store the other day and saw a shirt that said “i make my own money” and it made me smile.

i struggled to carry it alone for all those years and i may still be struggling. but i’m not alone. i know this much is true.

the thoughts that follow

this morning as with every morning the sun rose too soon. and the boy rose before it. i read my daily news online and it starts my day just right. this morning over at shutter sisters i found myself typing a comment that was no comment at all. what she had done was offer me a writing prompt without me even knowing it. it was a persistent seed that demanded to see light.

~~~~~~~~~~~~

to have and to hold. to hold and let go.

your words moved me, and i know this melancholy in which you write albeit slightly different. and you don’t ask for a photo and i don’t want to disturb the mood but it struck me as funny that i have a photo of hands, of his hands, that i studied for so long, that i was drawn to before we ever met. hands i knew were mine that i also knew i had to let go.

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

i sipped my chai then later chugged it as we walked out the door at 7am because i had no more free hands or arms. me, still thinking about this. always this.

and my shoulders are tight and my boy is napping again so my evenings are wonky and so am i with migraines and baggage and grocery lists and laundry piles and i walk out into the world anyway.

in it. but not of it. not in the game of high heels and pretty pretties like those i see around me. i’m in it shuffling through on the other side, just outside the lines, exempt from the game. but still i wonder about this. always this. please don’t see me now. not today. because you wouldn’t recognize me anyway. i am not this shell of me that is out in the world. 

give me time.

i see pairs. doubles. sets of two. everywhere i go. and it gets me thinking of why we pick teams. we pair up because we don’t want to be alone. because what is it to be a grown up? what is it to be an adult? to deal with the muck and the bills and the broken toys and broken wants all while life is moving full speed. this is why we pair up. to see each other through. to feel a part of a team. to build each other up. to feel loved, respected, equal, understood. we pair up because it makes the world feel that much kinder and it’s easier than going it alone.

make a wish.

when i was 14 you were 4 and i tucked you in for midday nap. me, the babysitter. you were all mutant ninja turtles and pop rocks. i was all lip gloss and mall bangs. now you are a gentle hand on the back and running like jungle monkeys with a gang of seven toddlers at your heels. and i am ma’am and mother and stressed. i am proud of you. this generation of boys.

you are not anyone i have ever known previously, but then again my snowglobe has been capsized and little plastic flurries are scattering, sending me drifting into parts of the world i never ventured before. never without reason.

so here i am facing down the previous generation of boys. ten years my junior. and they are familiar. in the kindest brother sense. nothing but platonic nothingness, they are you. and you unknowingly are rewiring my brain. for all humans, all of man, all men. the world is kind and gentle and fun. and i want to believe you. i begin to believe. i know in my heart that there are more of you out there. and what i really want to do is thank you.

you give me hope is all. hope for my own boy, and hope for me and my heart and my smile that cracks and my laugh that booms with head thrown back at the old man dances that come from someone so young.

you are not him.

and i don’t know who is. and i’m most certainly not ready for him. but it’s just good to know i’m thinking of him. whoever he is. wondering what he’s doing right this minute. and maybe somewhere in the world he is thinking too, and we are just waiting til the flurries settle.

we interrupt this broadcast…

sorry for the silence.
static on the line.
dead air.

it’s becoming spring here, slowly but surely. and i’m busy, and learning how to juggle without dropping balls. i’m struggling to be the one woman show and still find time for sleep. *(i can do the one woman show bit, it’s the sleep part that eludes me)*

just wanted to say hello and i miss you.
this.
us.
me.
whatever it is this space has grown to be.

and not to worry, i’ll be back. *(this is my own reassurance)* i’m not gone, just a little quiet. but i’m always thinking of you and wanting to share the thousands of words that cross my mind each day.

soon.
so soon.
things will be sprouting.