#wildwriting

My therapist tells me that, in her culture, when a lost loved one wants to connect, you feel it in your bones.

The bones hold our pain, our memories differently; a shifting occurs.

The grief that has taken up residence in my chest suddenly collects in my jawbone and I am unable to speak until the heaviness subsides:

this tender ache of missing my dad, the way he used to be before this blankness unfolded in his brain, a void in the shape of my mom, a blackhole of memories.

During our visit yesterday, he looked placid on the outside face calm as water, but frozen eyes that seemed to escape the room before being forced back--

I am learning not everything needs to feel so forced anymore.

There is between us a bridge of who he was and who he is to me, of his thoughts and feelings that I used to think I could read so easily and what he really made of, the essence I recognize in my bones, the moments his eyes sparkle in recognition, in laughter, in curious moments between the blankness.

I delayed this round of grief too long, until it gave me a hangover. Heavy all day, all week really. No therapy scheduled in anticipation, a mistake. I'm not good at sitting myself down to focus like this, especially because it hurts so much in new and unexpected ways. But I read the news that one of my favorite spoken word poets, Andrea Gibson, died today and it was like a throughline to a tenderness I had been ignoring all week. Maybe it's because I was transported back to the freshness of that grief; dawn and darkness, the way time slows and bends and nothing makes sense, as if reality itself is blasphemous. Maybe it's because I have a love I could not imagine losing like that, and it broke my heart for my Dad all over again. I think especially it is because I have a daughter of my own now, and beneath the occasional residual layers of anger and bitterness about how my mom died, I am just really sad that she won't get to meet Astrid. Especially because she wanted grandchildren more than anything. 

It's kind of like I've been in a time warp all week-which is also what I've noticed happens when I don't slow down for my grief (or any big feelings really). And then I started doing the worst kind of math, anniversary equations that don't make any sense, like how old will I be in 2035, at the twenty year mark, or thirty? In 2045, I'll be the same age she was when she died--as if this means something beyond an arbitrary significance. 

So instead, I'm thinking of something I said to my aunt last week, about how my mom's death forged me into the mother, the woman I was meant to be. It was an offhand comment that, upon further reflection, feels more true every day.

I have accomplished a small part so far, which is getting sober. Not small as inconsequential, but more like the top layer of something deep and complex. It’s about practicing being present instead of abandoning myself, my emotions and my experiences.

A difficult truth I am learning and relearning is that I can know it is important to slow down and feel these things I deem too ugly or sharp instead of numbing or distracting from them, but it doesn't mean I won't resist or find other ways of circumventing feeling all this. It's excruciating because it feels so final and empty and real. 

But the truth is, it's not always so empty. There are beautiful little snippets of my mother all around me when I take a breath and slow down enough to notice. Like when my husband whips up an absolutely delicious and accidental kitchen creation, I see her so strongly. Or when he references Star Trek (often), I know she would approve. (It’s a bonus that he’s tall too! That was important to her)   I see her when my daughter crinkles her nose in the same cheesy, mischievous grin and in the eyes and hands of my aunts and uncles. And all of this is so equally, beautifully real that it makes the pain of missing her worth it (most days)--because it's all inextricably tied together.

Taking Your Baby to Your Mother’s Grave

sounds like the worst kind of pilgrimage; 
more bitter than sweet, reminiscent

of that unrelenting day you had to stay

and watch her get lowered down into the ground,

to make it real somehow.

But as you plop your daughter down,

her little body balancing on the burial mound

layers above the bones of her grandmother,

fat fingers tracing the grooves of names and dates,
 (already a student of her own lineage)—

there is the quiet remembering of how peaceful this place is, 
the ache of this space dispersed; 
a cracked open heart, wide as sky and

just as empty.

inspired by Maya Stein's "First We Have to Start With Nothing"

First we start with nothing-isn't that how it always goes? Skin forging together to make something new. We wake nakedly to this new reality. It's like the way people with kids always used to say to me: "You'll understand when you have kids" but it's really not that simple, and we don't (understand I mean, no one does.) It's more like a great mystery, a great unraveling; being this responsible all the time is both tiring and magical.

What's next? A new future, everything I write about lately seems so future focused when all I am trying to do is cultivate presence. Sometimes I worry I will lose my identity in motherhood, like so many others-- but in fact, this is why doing this wild writing is so important. I want to stay sharp, knives in the drawer instead of blunted with inexperience. Maybe we are starting with nothing, every day like a container. This Monday has been a good one so far: yoga, a bit distracted, home, under the blank shade of the umbrella, watching Astrid tool around the yard, the way she does "Knees Up Mother Brown," the drunken and dizzying delight with each twirl. I wish I could sleep like her, heavy and unbothered, and when she awakens, there is something new there. The dream within the dream. She upgrades overnight.

We start with nothing until there is everything embedded with meaning. Because that is what having a kid is to me-a chance at everything, future converging with the present, shaped by the past.

After Mother's Day, my therapist asked me: "What does being Astrid's mom mean to you, right now in this moment?" And I have thought about that question every day since. Most times, I don't have a simple, clean answer but that's kinda the point, isn't it? Lately, my parenting is about transmitting values. I think I told my therapist something about wanting to raise a good person and she said, "How could you not?" But I know that people turn out how they turn out and despite our best efforts, I still worry... I suppose I'll always worry, just about different things.

inspired by Morgan Farley's "Why I Stay"

What's real is nothing like I thought, changing every day yet solidifying in slow brilliant meaning accidentally, while you were distracted and not looking.

What's real is my daughter's laugh when she is utterly delighted, starting deep in the belly from those soft strong fluctuating muscles and bursting from her throat, somewhere between a song and a scream.

What's real is the vibrant green of the tomato leaves, billowing out with their beautiful pungent fragrance or the look in my dog's eyes when he is utterly contented, laying belly splayed to the world in a patch of sunshine on the living room floor, filtering through the window.

What's real is the smell of good coffee. When I met my husband, he said to me: "I will never let you drink cheap coffee again" and I believed him; the swirl of cream hitting earthy brown liquid and unfurling its truth, the mingling of two substances, both true at the same time.

What's real is the moment right before my client cries and their face and voice simultaneously break like we've hit on something either really big or sad or scary but it is indeed, the realest.

inspired by Maya Stein's "Arriving"

It's amazing how sharing a few deep beaths with strangers in a room can make me feel like we are sharing a body. I feel disconnected from my body today, but I arrange it, part by part, to match the others in the yoga studio and breathe into what feels stiff, disconnected, numb. It's a practice of shaking out my joints, and then this writing is a practice of shaking out my mental pockets. My brain feels blank today too, the last day of work before vacation. I never really liked the beach before, but I find I am looking forward to it, how the air and the light will look different against the backdrop of the Atlantic Ocean.

We brought my daughter Astrid to Florida when she was five months old, just to dip her ties into this ocean before traveling to California two months later so she could greet the Pacific. Water is so healing this way, and I forgot until I am there, I forget the gratitude of this mighty pull, the mystery of the moon and tides love affair over the ages, constant, strong and a bit secretive. I complain about sand and sunburns too much, and I want to remember how these things feel this time, notice the vitamin D being absorbed into my skin, think about the tiny crystals and microorganisms making up the sand itself. I think it is impossible to live like this all the time, but maybe that is mindfulness-surf and sun and sand; the falling peony petals arranged on a countertop; our cat curled in the corner, missing his mate, a grief we haven't even touched since last week when we had to put her down, all this traveling and busyness, broken air conditioners and making dinners and working and trying to catch up on sleep. I'm ready for the pause, the break in this monotony that somehow also feels frantic, like time is moving too fast for us to slow down and catch our breath.