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.

A poem on motherhood

On certain days

I can slip into a mothering skin

Use words that slide along the morning’s edge

Pull in warmth from the open windows

My fingers

Braid light into their hair

Trace constellations across their skin

Some days

I delight in the very existence of their fingernails

In the miracle of sex and birth

And the reflection of my face in theirs

On other days

Mothering is stiff

Uneasy

A skin that won’t molt

Sharing breathe feels

Like dying

Like a stone

Sinking fast into dark water

Re: stacks

Did you know that there are volumes of writing inside of me? Pages and pages upon shelves within rooms within echoing libraries? I can feel them stack up, one disheveled row on top of the last. I feel the weight of them hold my feet to some nebulous title I sometimes refer to as “writer.” But I am not a writer because I do not write. It is sad to think of the stories that well up and die within me before they can ever reach the page. I’ve spent a lot of time wondering why I do not write more. Probably more time than I’ve spent actually writing. Because it fucking hurts, I hear myself answer. Like digging a finger hard along my spine, exposing everything delicate and concealed. Because I’m never quite sure how to sew myself up afterwards and I’m tired of spilling all over the floor.

I called Estelle this morning, the first time since March. I love to imagine her in her Rossmoor apartment, spending slow days amongst the 90 some years of art she has both made and collected. She’s been writing every morning, after she checks her email and plays a few games of Freecell. Her self-published poetry is on the bookshelf next to Ron’s novel. I feel a strange shock of guilt each time I see them, as if their mere existence mocks my own lack of writing.

I tell her about my resignation, my percolating thoughts on what might be next in my career, what I might do in the mean time.

“I do hope you’ll write,” she says.

“Me too.” And I mean it. I really really do.

Offerings

Recently I was doing a guided meditation when the leader brought us to an altar. Truthfully, I didn’t know how to visualize such a thing. Yes, I can picture a Catholic altar or even an offrenda for dia de los muertes. But what would my own sacred altar consist of? Whose picture would I reverently frame? What could I offer as a gift to some higher power? What might I sacrifice in service of something bigger? I like to play with those images, to consider what the physical manifestation of my spirituality might look like. But those images have become a springboard for a more fundamental question to guide me: which altar will you worship at today?

Will you serve the great master of material productivity today? Will you bow to each and every check on your to do list? Maybe. I’ve had plenty of those days (years?) How about the patriarchy? Will you sacrifice your divine motherhood, that tie to the women whose bodies brought you here and the women who will bring it forth? Are you worshipping at an altar you should be burning?

I am waking up to the idea that every day I am alive I am in service of something. The beauty of it is that my thoughts set the altar, my actions send the prayer.

Hello you

I have written about this before and maybe I will need to write about it again and again. Happiness is so much work for me. Truthfully, it almost always has been. I can remember the shift, being 11 years old and suddenly losing my grip on that easy childhood happiness. I can see myself staring out at a gloomy day, listening to a particularly angsty Goo Goo Dolls song and just knowing that nothing would be the same again. Objectively, I can see the beauty in every part of my life. I have wished and ached for every bit of it. But I have not always known how to breathe it all in and let it become me. It’s something that comes easily to others and it’s just not the way I am built. I have come to realize that this has been a trade off in my life: my passion, creativity, ferocious hunger for the world, and my bottomless well of empathy has all come at a cost. The truth is you cannot be as in love with the world as I am and not grapple with the flipside, holding the light and the dark both so closely.

Recently, I seem to have turned a corner. There’s a bit of dappled light overhead and I am feeling more and more like this work is beginning to pay off. I am trying little things, like baking delicious food and picking up projects I have shelved for too long. I’ve started planning zero waste Christmas presents that I am actually excited to make. I am making peace with the ever-present sand scattered about my floors and making a true effort to have a sense of humor in my day. When I am leading a silent painting class and a 10-year-old rips the biggest fart imaginable, I am right there buckled over in laughter with the kids. All of those brighter parts of me seem to be slowly popping back into place. I am welcoming them back with open arms.

Papa

I sit in the far back of the boat as we slip through the water, out of the cove and into the belly of the lake. Usually there would be music. Maybe Talking Heads or Aerosmith. Y&T until I complain mercilessly and someone puts on Fleetwood Mac instead. But today it’s just the sound of the water parting around us and our own aimless conversation. We’ve already had the hard conversations today. We’ve covered chemo and stress and how to unravel generations of toxic thought. I have tried to ignore that his eyes look different, smaller and sadder. He shows me his fingernails that have grown out for the first time since my childhood. He has quit drinking and started meditating. He is a man determined to cure himself of this incurable cancer. Only right now I can’t handle the relentless positivity. I’m just not there yet. I want to cry and wallow and pity us all, even just for a day. But for his sake, I don’t go there.

We putter along the shore past the more imposing houses. The poplar leaves have turned completely and the now-yellow aspen dance at their reflection in the water. A flock of coots shuffle awkwardly away from the boat. It’s not hard to imagine that today is like any other we’ve spent drifting on the lake. But really, it’s not. It’s not the same. For now, I can hold that knowledge for safe keeping. I will put on my happy face if that’s what he needs.

Heavy balloons

The month before I moved to England my father gave me a tan moleskin journal for Christmas. He never said what it was for. I figured it would be a travel journal, carefully dated, documenting every museum, every gondola ride, every baguette. But I was not that kind of traveler, the kind that could revel in the weightlessness of it; being everywhere and nowhere at once. Instead, I filled the journal with lists. A list for the Netflix queue I had put on hold; a list of library books to check out; one of seeds to start when I returned in the summer; even a list of feelings I could not let myself forget. Every one of those lists was crafted in pain, in absolute fear of losing my grip on the little life I had back in San Diego. A week in I called the boyfriend I had broken up with just weeks before, asked him to take me back. He did. I backpedaled, trying to undo the decision I had made to live 5,000 miles from home.

For those first few weeks I shrunk into a smaller, frightened version of myself. I was unrecognizable. Thankfully, it didn’t last. Eventually, I became myself again, the girl that needed the adventure in the first place. That girl made fast friends, saw everything she drooled over in her art history classes, and even crashed a wedding and danced on tabletops. But I won’t forget the lists. They are that tender part of me that wants a quiet life but doesn’t always know how to live within it. They are the counterpart to the side of me that dreams big and wants to set the rules on fire.

At 31, I find myself still walking this narrow line between freedom and form. More often than not I am falling over painfully onto one side or the other. The balance never feels quite right. But I am starting to make peace with the clumsiness of it all. Or at least showing myself a bit of grace in the process.

A conversation with myself

Me: Write.

Also Me: Writing means saying the truth. The truth is painful. I can’t hold any more pain right now.

Me: Write anyway.

Also Me: I’m so tired and so sad and so lonely.

Me: Write about it.

Also Me: I can’t. It’s garbage. I would rather produce nothing than garbage.

Me: Maybe someone else needs to hear your garbage right now.

Also Me: But then they’ll know I’m tired and sad and lonely.

Me: Maybe that’s not so bad.

Also Me: Maybe it’s not…

This is the extent to which I can show up in the world right now. Nothing is harder than giving myself the space to be tired and sad and lonely and NOT rushing to fix it. Nothing is harder than listening closely to what the hell is really going on with me, what I am lacking on a deeper soul level. I can’t say this enough: Every day is so hard. So very hard. But I am still here, still showing up. Of that, I am proud.