happy thanksgiving from 1980!

can you see me? i’m the one smiling.

going home is a bit like peeling back the years, turning me into the child i haven’t been since i left home sixteen years ago. i certainly didn’t think of myself as a child then, but i do now.

tomorrow i’m getting on a plane with my son and his 104 degree fever and we are flying east. right now while the house is dark and my bags are packed, a song plays through my head. one line in particular: “Load the car and write the note. Grab your bag and grab your coat. Tell the ones that need to know. We are headed north.” 

i’m not even sure what i’ll find there. what i expect or can’t believe until i see with my own eyes. the passage of time witnessed with fresh eyes. alot can happen in a year and i think i’ll be surprised by what i find there at the edge of the coast where the wind whips my hair and the sand sticks to my shoes.

i need that space. the space that only the coastline can offer. because when you stand there you can see forever. and all lost hopes and dreams, the should’ve the could’ve, the lost years and memories that continue to slip away… they are at your back. they allow themselves to be set down there in the sand while you step away and catch your breath, when you look out to the sea.

it’s true, i gather strength at the coast.

so, goodbye for now. i’ll be back in about a week, taking my time to shake the sand from our clothes while i process the stories i collected from the edge of the world.

Don’t go. Don’t stay.
Daughter. Morning after afternoon
the last year slips away.

Singing all the old songs, you will go
(ambivalence of moon, certainty of sun)
we know

only half of what we are.
The earth is earth to us, star
perhaps

if apprehended far enough away.
Daughter –

don’t go.
Don’t stay.

‘To A High School Senior’
by Pat Schneider

I wish that you could see me when I’m flying in my dreams
The way I laugh there way up high
The way I look when I fly
The way I live
The way I fly

i was a bird in my dreams, flying always flying. stopping to perch on wires, sit on fences, hang from my hands from lightposts… because in reality i was just a little girl. 

flying dreams were my escape. they were my way out of body, my way to catch air, experience free fall, taste freedom.

i woke one morning with the fresh colors in my mind, the edge of land and sea, the wind still in my hair, sand on my feet as i lifted off straight up off the beach into blue sky. i was four. and it was the first dream i ever remember having.

i’ve been trying to find my way back to that take off ever since.

I don’t really know what I’m doing
Just watching myself in some play
And the actress looks like she wants to go home
And lie in bed all day
Yeah lie in a big bed all day

~ Chief by Patty Griffin

he told me about a picture he saw at school. “it was an x-ray.” i think of him so little in his hospital gown worried that i couldn’t be in the room with him as they looked at his lungs with x-ray vision.

“it was an x-ray of a heart that was broken, momma. it had a big crack in the middle of it.”

silence.

“can a heart break, momma?”

i lie.
i say no.
“it’s not possible for a heart to break like that.”

not like that anyways, i think to myself. not a cartoonish zigzag line breaking solid pieces in two. one day i imagine he’ll remember that i lied to him when he feels that pain. it will feel like it’s broken. and that it won’t ever feel whole again.

but it heals. i’m not sure how. it’s not like we are salty starfish able to grow more legs. but a heart mends and somehow grows bigger because of the break.

and this time i won’t be lying.

we don’t give ourselves enough credit. the power we carry in our minds to create, draw, pull something into existence… as if from mid air.

it’s wonderful. magical.

harness that energy. roll it gently. shape it into what you most desire. i think you’ll be surprised by the universe’s response when you call out to it.

from what i know, it echoes back love.

this morning two worlds collided. i love it when that happens. it causes a spark in my mind, leaving me scrambling for a pen and paper. for me the catalyst is most always sound and font. 

i’m was reading (and wondering) about this time next year. wondering, wondering, always wondering. what will i dream of when i have my life by the coast?

and what i hear? it’s peace and deep inhales setting worry aside leaving room for all the trees of the field to clap their hands.

walk with me, will you? two women, kristin and dani (i’m blessed to call them friends) were the creative genius behind this concept. read about the love and then be sure to click on this little slideshow button (below) to journey with me down to our favorite creek.

view slideshow

i was the girl hiding in the trees. branches became rooms in the most beautiful house i could imagine. for years, i’d come home with pine sap on my jeans and rhododendron leaves tangled in my hair.

we both stopped in mid-stride when we saw it there, seemingly growing straight out of the dry ground. it was mighty and strong and amazing to watch. his voice was deep and thoughtful. he hugged with branches and walked on trunks. we were mesmorized, both myself and my son.

i haven’t felt that kind of magic since i was a kid. and so because of it, we walked up together to this magnificent tree, just to get close to him, to breathe in some of that magic. he looked down at us with deeply set eyes and spoke his slow greeting. i became a 34 year old little girl thinking of nothing else to say other than “you are beautiful.”

and so that is what i said.

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

on monday i caught a frog. it moved at my feet in the dewy clover. i knelt down to find him hiding. he jumped from my hands twice before settling into the safety of my open palm.

he peered up at me with big eyes on a tiny body. his heart racing out of his skin. after awhile we just sat there staring at each other. he at me, and me at him. i laughed outloud because i haven’t caught a frog since i was ankle deep in a new jersey creek. i grew up in that creek with g.i. joes and lego damns to make lagoons for rock sitting mermaids. i left my childhood there on the banks of that creek. i think it’s waiting for me still.

i let him go in the clover and he hopped away on springy legs never once looking back.

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

“Got Prayer?” their signs ask me while i am stopped at a red light about to turn into the market. do i have prayer? not in your traditional sense. i wave anyway, simply because they’re out there like petitioners for hope and faith and belief.

and so am i, in my own way. catching frogs and letting them go. asking them to spread the word that i believe. because i still do. and if that is a prayer, then so be it. and if that is hope, then better yet. “tell your friends” i whispered, “i let you go because i am looking for a man named truth.”

“she was weeping over the end of a cycle. how one must be thrust out of a finished cycle in life and that leap the most difficult to make, to part with one’s faith, one’s love, when one would prefer to renew the faith and recreate the passion.  

the struggle to emerge out of the past, clean of memories; the inadequacy of our hearts to cut life into separate and final portions; the pain of this constant ambivalence and interrelation of emotions; the hunger for frontiers against which we might lean as upon closed doors before we proceed forward; the struggle against diffusion, new beginnings, against finality in acts without finality or end, in our cursedly repercussive being…”

~ Anais Nin

“It turns out that the drain pipe from the sink is attached to nothing and water just runs right onto the ground in the crawl space underneath the house and then trickles out into the stream that passes through the backyard.

It turns out that the house is not really attached to the ground but
sits atop a few loose concrete blocks all held in place by gravity, which, as I understand it, means “seriousness.”

Well, this is serious enough.

If you look into it further you will discover that the water is not attached to anything either and that perhaps the rocks and the trees are not all that
firmly in place.

The world is a stage.

But don’t try to move anything. You might hurt yourself, besides that’s a job for the stagehands and union rules are strict. You are merely a player about to deliver a soliloquy on the septic system to a couple dozen popple trees and a patch of pale blue sky. “

~ Gravity  by Louis Jenkins

this place i am is lush with all its greenery. it is joyous. this is the place i found when i needed it most. this is the place i landed after jumping. this place i will not forget.

the cedar trees with shaggy bark grow crooked out of thickly decadent grass. the views, the space, the tree house balconies. i have come to call this place home. see? i said it. and it sounds awkward as it crumbles off my lips. home is a perception, it slithers away the minute i try to pin it down. this is me, the gypsy. this is me never living anywhere longer than eight years.

home is sweet. home is…

this is not a place of permanence. i know this now. when she handed me the keys she told me this. home is a place to rest, to catch your breath. this is my between place. she somehow knew this, maybe it was in my eyes. the keys jingled in my hands as she said “you never know what will happen.”

i am staying present in this place of impermanence. i am bowing down, grateful for what it brings me, and for what i have brought myself because of it. so, when it asks me to lie down for a moment and enjoy the green, i do.

because home is sweet.

we are home from our journey into the time warp that entails the ER and an overnight stay at the hospital. what an adventure!

after a fever spike sunday night and that deep scary cough, then a series of nebulizer treatments in our doctors office on monday, we were sent to the ER because river was not responding and still not getting enough oxygen for the amount of work his body was doing.

he sure is working hard  is what everyone said to me with worry and smiling eyes (for the benefit of the mother) but a mother knows better.

this is the adrenaline rush of being hurried into the honeycomb, safe from outside (devoid of natural sunlight and fresh air) tucked into the corner of this world buzzing with worker bees humming and friendly with masks and smiling eyes all working together to figure out why my son was struggling so hard to breathe.

this is intense back to back treatments, steroids, fresh oxygen, chest xray, and IV fluids.

now,26 hours later (and two hours of sleep) we know it was  intermittent asthma and we are at home with all the necessities to keep his lungs in check.

it was quite the event for this momma/child duo. and for those of you who have much more practice with the hospital experience, i commend you all. i do believe i’ve said it before… mothers are the strongest species on earth.

i now know this to be true:
being in the ER with a child who can’t breath takes years off your life.

while going through paperwork and prescriptions, i found this… these words scribbled on the back of a doctor’s receipt, most likely written in the dark of sleep deprivation, monday at 3am.

they arrive in the dark of sleep
i open my eyes to see them bedside
hovering in scrubs
like angels with masks
and gloved hands.

this is not real.

the mist floats, rises, dissipates
he looks like the dream of a tiny fighter pilot
masks, tubes, IV’s, oxygen levels beeping.
in this darkest hour of morning, there is no dark
with the constant green glow of the computers
commenting and criticizing his vitals.

he’s a fighter pilot struggling to breathe
with tears in his eyes.

they are a team of angels
they monitor the hospital dreams
together in this bed
tagged on our wrists
i breathe in, he breathes out.
and there’s not enough oxygen between us.

i’m not sure how we ended up here
yes, i know how i got here
i circled the parking lot four times
and carried him in.
he was heavy on my shoulder
we got a room right away

this is fast, i think.
they are so kind here.
i later find that
breathing takes priority
but i cannot gauge this sense of urgency.
emergency room.

everyone knows his name
and there are so many people and forms and procedures
but i keep wondering how did i get here?
so far from home.

i know how i got here, to this bed
eight hours later,
they wheeled him up
a bed on wheels, a talkative dude named mike,
a 1am ride and a whole different team of nurse and doctors.

and the dry erase board with the goal for the night:
breathe easy.

two hours of walking around the city at night makes me feel strangely alive. slinging my camera and my tripod i set out with no destination in mind. alone. maybe i was hoping to get lost, but i know this city too well for that. this place, this place i’ve lived longer than anywhere else. how can that be? and how much longer will it keep me?

i’m feeling drawn towards something, and away from something. from what yet i don’t know. and so i keep walking, knowing at some point i’ll find it, whatever it is i’m looking for. 

Listen

with the night falling we are saying thank you

we are stopping on the bridge to bow from the railings

we are running out of the glass rooms

with our mouths full of food to look at the sky

and say thank you

we are standing by the water looking out in different directions

…

with the animals dying around us

our lost feelings we are saying thank you

with the forests falling faster than the minutes

of our lives we are saying thank you

with the words going out like cells of a brain

with the cities growing over us like the earth

we are saying thank you faster and faster

with nobody listening we are saying thank you

we are saying thank you and waving

dark though it is

~ w.s merwin

this middle place is not mid-life. it is merely space in time, a mathematical equation of birth-life-death. we spin in orbit in this middle place. we spin out beyond ourselves, past freedom and invincible youth, but not yet to a place of rest.

this place is churning, it is frenzy. it is anything but slowing down. with one hand on a child and one hand on a parent we (those of us who find ourselves in this middle place) are metaphorically stuck. we are the balance, the weight centered on the rope in this tug of war. not yet ready to let go of either side. child or parent.

i sit wide-eyed with a nervous stomach because there’s nothing else to do but wait. and so i busy myself with tedious nearly manic cleaning, meaningless moments, i procrastinate real work and deadlines and clients.

it shifts so quickly, this space between. and it hits hard when i am alone. when he is at school and i have those few minutes between drop of and work and pick up again.

it shifts quickly. the focus of health, the teetering of test results and news of something new, something old, something different, something quite possibly sadder slipping from view. mother, father, child. i will always be your baby.

i have moments of great strength.
i have hours of great weakness.

will we never know our parents grief? what we remember is how they moved slow in the evening. how they rose early in the morning. how we always ate the same dinner on sundays after a day at the beach or an afternoon in the garden. will we never know that spark of person from their youth? it leaves us before we are ever ready. here we are again, always missing what we don’t have.

“oh dear” he says. then instantly there’s silence over the phone. i can feel it, i know his face is screwed up with tears, then sobbing like i’ve never heard in my life. my heart is breaking and it sounds like his sobbing.

and what comes out of my mouth is compassion. i’m surprised by my own strength. here, get on my back and i’ll carry you and this weight we feel. it’s come full circle now, for me to carry you. i am your baby but i’m stronger than you now. this i don’t tell him. but this he knows. this is where i am, welcome to the middle place.

there is so much empathy it hurts. i can feel his sadness with every molecule of my body. it is nearly too much, nearly.

~~~~~~~~~

i’m red-rimmed eyes hiding behind and under sunglasses and a hat. at pick up he runs to me as usual, in his shy afterschool way. and i scoop him up and quickly head to the car. he nuzzles down into my neck, i kiss his cheek and choke on my words. i love you is what i say, but what i’m thinking is please let me stay strong for you, i can see you as a grown man and i don’t want you, my baby, to have to carry me too soon. no parent wants that weight on their child. but sometimes it is required.

i don’t know who he’s talking to, my back is turned with him in my arms. but he yells out to the group of teachers and classmates we are leaving in his loudest proudest voice, “She’s Wonder Woman!“

my tears turn laughter at this parent-child-parent journey we are about to set foot on.