birthday

The night before their birthdays I buy them helium balloons and daffodils; the flowers that filled our apartment after their late winter births. I put out the birthday ring, the tree of life cup, the small wooden rainbow, the necklace with the ceramic pendant. There is ice skating and slumber parties and caramel apples and ice cream cakes. I imagine the details of these days and hope they will echo back in some future luminous memory. But when it’s done I am not thinking about them. I am, selfishly, indulgently, thinking of me.

It’s hard to look at those early pictures, new motherhood so naively and awkwardly radiating from me. Of course I love her, that wild, oblivious, 23-year-old me. I love her like I’d love a third child: without judgement, with curiosity and tenderness. But I can’t connect back to her. I can’t or I won’t. Because I’ve never been more alone than in those first years of being a young mother. And although I can see true joy on my face, I remember the price. In some ways, I was braver then. I lived inside my idealism so confidently. I was still very much convinced that if I played my cards the right way, I’d never get hurt, not really. It’s the distance between she and I that is hard to take in. I’m not the same. Time always wins.

Tonight marks 11 years since I became her. That night I laughed through contractions on the couch, ate manicotti and envied the Chianti in everyone else’s glass. I could tell you every detail of that night and the following day right up until my daughter was born in that very room. I could tell you every detail because I was there. But to this day, I marvel that that obstinate, dreamy girl and I are one in the same.

1/18/23

Today I read a quote that said publishing your writing is both arrogant and generous: generous to share such vulnerable pieces of yourself and arrogant to assume anyone cares enough to read it. I laughed out loud. This is exactly the conversation I have with myself any time I think about sharing something I’ve written. Like, Jesus, am I really willing to cast these tender details of my life out for public consumption? And why? To what end? And I always come back to the same thing. The only times in my life when I have felt seen and understood and connected were when I was willing to be brave and honest. It’s never a guarantee. In fact, it has been disappointingly rare in my life. But it still feels worth the risk. So I will keep flinging those tender details out there and let them land where they may.

***

Untitled (alternative title: I hate titling poetry)

When I say

In your darkest hour,

I will pray for you

I don’t mean I will fall to my knees

Small,

Supplicant

Calling in favors

Or pulling invisible strings

I mean

I will think of you as I brush my teeth:

All that love with no place to go

I will paint a landscape

Of the lake you visit every August

Where castilleja still stands like matchsticks

In the high Sierra summer

If you forget

I will water the peace lily on your desk

The one you worry you won’t keep alive

But I know you will

I can’t pray with folded hands

Believe me, I’ve tried

The only true prayer I’ve sent is in the work of my hands

Or my hand in another’s

I can only offer them to you

To fill your glass with whatever lets you sleep

To cradle your grief

In the here and now

Giving it all

Somewhere to go

Warm, not cool

All I know is the title: “Warm, not cool”

And that it’s a story about being 34

And realizing that what you want

Is for others to describe you

As warm

That ‘cool’ is so firmly in the past

You wonder why you ever wanted it

11/15/22

Sometimes I work on a poem for weeks. Or I give up and let it sit unwritten in my Notes for years. This one took nothing at all. It’s the kind that comes with such clarity of feeling that it almost writes itself. They don’t come that often but when they do I get that giddy, heart-rising-to-my-throat feeling, like falling in love; the ultimate high.

Untitled

You might think

If you met me on the summer solstice

I’d been studded with light

Holes punched in a tin can lantern

You might see 

Freckles on my shoulders 

And think

I could keep warm next to her

You might get me all wrong 

Watching me 

Tease the night

On the longest day

If you waited 

You’d see me in the woods

Shaking leaves from the trees

Smelling like November

Moss, smoke, and wet bark 

With enough time 

You would watch me

Become the parts of the forest

That disappear

Into themselves

You’d see me 

Walking into the dark 

For a glowing ember

On the longest night

them’s the breaks

My writing has been stuck for a while now. This isn’t the first time it has ever happened. I expect fallow weeks, months, sometimes years. But this time is different. It’s not that there isn’t anything to write about. There’s just too much. There’s too much that hasn’t yet been “composted”. I learned that term from Natalie Goldberg. She says that after an event or experience we must spend time letting it compost; allowing the carefully separated layers of sight, smell, word, and emotion to break down into something useful, something easy to move your hands through. So that when it lands on the page it has coalesced into memory. But I can’t do it.  I can’t seem to put the past squarely into its rightful place. Instead, I am constantly startled to find myself sitting in the middle of an emotional puddle, unaware how the hell I got here and why I’m covered in the remnants of something that happened a long time ago. There’s just not enough space, not enough oxygen to compost it all. There’s shit at the bottom of the pile that I can hardly bare to remember, let alone consciously bring to light. So it all stays buried and when I try to pull out just one part the weight of the last (and the last and the last) pin it down. And I give up. Because the present itself feels like plenty enough.

Roe

Do not tell me not to let this steal my joy

I have been the chaser

The wooer

The rescuer of my joy for 33 years

I have watched it struggle and resist

inside the closed hands of men

I have watched it spin out from inside my body

Dart across the continent

I’ve lassoed it back to my chest

Thousands of nights

Tucked it inside

And sung it to sleep

Do not tell me that my rage steals

My peace

I’ve seen them dance together

In one drive through the mountains

Windows down, breathe full of cedar

Lupine, sweet pea, Shasta daisies

And gasping sobs

Throat sticky with pollen

And impotent words

On a less than auspicious Mothers Day

I’ll be honest: I don’t like Mother’s Day. It has always felt disappointing and performative. Maybe it’s because of that very first Mother’s Day when Rob gave me two tickets to go hot air ballooning and when we tried to book them a month later the company had gone out of business. 10 years later, I still haven’t been in a hot air balloon. Or maybe it’s because the way that mothers are celebrated on this day tends to have nothing to do with giving them what they truly need. Rest. Support. Advocacy. Policy. Ok maybe an eggs Benedict. Motherhood is sacred. And it is mundane. And if that particular intersection of the two is not where you find yourself drawn, there is nothing and nobody that should be allowed to say otherwise. I don’t say that in theory. I say this with the knowledge of what happens to the children of women who were not able, ready, or willing to walk this path. They are the babies left unbathed for months. They are the children left to sleep outside their trailer with only dog food to eat. They are the ones told they are the product of rape, and whose subsequent rage lands them in foster home after foster home because nobody wants them. These are the fates of real children. And yet there are human beings out there who think it is merciful or holy to force their mothers to bring them into this type of existence. So this year I’ll be sitting Mothers Day out. I mean I won’t, because my kid is vomiting. But don’t bring me a fucking card or flowers. I’ll take the eggs Benedict though.

What I Will Tell Them

Someday, if they ask, and maybe if they don’t, I will tell my daughters that raising them was hard

That it took every last drop of me to mother them in dignity and infinite love

I want them to know that some nights I would spin and spin on the words we said to each other that day

Thinking how I wish I’d said it just a little bit different 

I want them to know that I considered just how to answer their questions

Always wondering if my answer sounded as full of wonder as their question did

I want my girls to know that their very existence pushed against the walls of my soul

Making the word ‘mother’ indelible on me

I want them to know that raising them was so powerful an experience of growth and love that it rearranged me permanently 

I want them to know that raising them was hard

But it was always the very best kind of hard

The other night

The other night I laughed

And before my mind could say otherwise

I heard the sound as something beautiful

I will never forget the purity of that moment

Or the promise that it will happen again

Blood

I am writing a story. I am writing a story with my days and my nights and my body and its pain. I am writing this story and I don’t know what it’s about but I know it’s long and tedious and not well-written. And I am beyond exhausted with this particular plot line that refuses to get to the fucking point already. The one that goes like, “Im fine, I’m here, I’m whole” and then without warning, “I am BLEEDING. NO, LISTEN TO ME, IM BLEEDING AND IT WONT STOP AND I NEED TO MAKE IT STOP AND MY GOD I HAVE NEVER BEEN THIS SICK AND IM REALLY TOO YOUNG FOR THIS TO BE HAPPENING, RIGHT??” The one with scene after insufferable scene of me lying motionless on my bed, anemic limbs heavy and useless. This one, this story that won’t seem to reach it’s god damn climax be is triumph or tragedy. And I’m starting to feel like it’s not actually me writing this story, it’s that one prick in every creative writing class I’ve ever taken, who can’t write a narrative arc to save his life. You know the one who writes pages and pages of self-indulgent description just luxuriating in his own words. This story can’t get past the tiresome details: the blood splashed down my green rain boots, the nurse who sees it before I do, the piteous wailing on the toilet, in the shower, folded over in bed. Over and over and over. Month after month after month. The feeling of driving home from work and suddenly the terror takes hold in my stomach because I know what’s happening and I can do less than nothing to stop it. Less than nothing because I am in fact the one doing this. I am the one bleeding. Passive but somehow entirely to blame.

For a year I’ve been trying to psychologically jump ship. No thank you, not my kind of story, I’m not a fan of sagas and I’ll just set the book down now. But it’s finally dawning on me that if I don’t write the ending, it’s going to be one I can’t live with. I waffle between absolute self pity and acknowledgement of the fact that I am far better off than I could be, could have been; that I have something my ancestors didn’t: options. So I weigh those options even though it still doesn’t feel like this can be my life, like this could be the hand I’ve been dealt. Yes, please remove that organ but leave those. Or maybe we can just take out the not so good parts of that organ? Yes, just scrape it right out. Perfect. Leave the rest, please. Because you see, I’ve failed her, my body. This perfectly strong body that I thought would just go on taking me everywhere I want to go. I must have done something wrong and now she can’t keep going unless I make the tough call. Now it’s my turn, I have to do it for her. I have to write the final pages and get us out of this ordinary tragedy.

Crucible

Today a photo memory popped up on my phone, reminding me that two years ago I was watching my daughter’s class perform a play. I can remember the night vividly; the food we ate at long, covered tables, the lighting, the lantern walk after into the black night. In this way, the passing of those two years feels unremarkable. I am two years older. A few more wiry silver hairs halo my head. My then craggy-toothed 7 year old has become a long-limbed 9 year old. The most ordinary passage of time. 

But I know the truth behind the pictures. I know that despite outward appearances, I was falling, and fast. It’s hard to pinpoint just when that wild descent started but by this day two years ago, I was doing some carefully choreographed free falling disguised as having my shit together. It’s painful to look at those pictures and think about the months I was about to face. I wish I could shield 31 year old me, or at the very least warn her of what was to come. But it wouldn’t have mattered. I’d have entered the crucible anyway. 

I looked at those pictures tonight and felt an old sadness remembering that time. But also, I felt relief. And pride. Because that old me, beloved though she was, isn’t here anymore. Because those two years changed me. Because 33 year old me is no longer falling. She’s landed just where she needs to be.

Witness

Some mornings I think I know the kind of day I am entering into. I drink coffee on the porch swing. I watch the woodpeckers maim the telephone poles and the robins hop around in their spring haste. I drag the hose around the yard, watering my starts and the tiny hopeful sprouts. I dream of zinnias and black-eyed- Susans and hollyhocks. I imagine the day moving ahead accordingly, with ease and creation and pockets of joy. I think I know the kind of day ahead. But sometimes I am wrong.

Sometimes my morning rituals do not appease the serotonin gods and I find that by noon I am fighting some shadowy presence lurking behind my eyes. It is part of me but somehow separate. I don’t know why tears sting my nose. I don’t know where the sadness came from. I realize soon that it does me no good to sit and analyze. Nor does it help to push it away, hoping for distraction. Instead, I scoop her up, this part of me I don’t yet know. She is so tender and lonely and scared but in that moment, she is seen. Maybe she is the sluffing off of old heartbreak. Maybe she is a kernel of human suffering, finding itself inside a heart that feels everything so deeply. Sometimes I never really find out. But it doesn’t matter because for a moment that tiny sliver of pain is witnessed. And like magic, gone.

It has taken me so many years to learn how to love myself in this way. I thought self-love was easy, a simple matter of “settling in”. But this kind of love is so much more active. It’s so much more vigilant. And sometimes it exhausts me. But it is so much less work than fighting my shadows. Now we just dance.