I could turn my heart to every matter undefined, laced with sadness, uncertainty, less than what I wished for. I could.
I ache enough holding love, hugs from small arms, cherished hopes like late winter buds; a promise of spring. Still, I sing here.
Pregnant with tears, matters I nestle in silent tenderness, a sacred sip of reality. My boys grow beautiful. I hold my breath, sigh as time slips.
Determined to live toward sanity, I offer laughter, listen to silence between words, make safe a path for fragile friends. Aren't we all? Turning my heart inside out, I pray.
They stand on longer-than-she-can-believe legs, possess defined jaw lines, cheek bones, composure. She studies each feature, especially those beautiful eyes.
Her older son flashes a crinkle-nose grin.
"Mooom, what?!" her younger son giggles, squirming.
"I'm grateful I get to be your mother," she offers, smiling.
Content, they turn back to an unconventional chess game. Little brother plays to act out scenes from Knight's of the South Bronx. Older brother aims to win. He will, they all know this from the start. No one cares. Least of all little brother. He enjoys his adored sibling's attention.
Laptop across her knees, she wonders, "Are there any words left?"
Winter, a strange blessing, calls, "Slow down."
She pulls a blanket around her shoulders and begins to write.
hello blank page
can you offer
miracles of clarity and depth
a classic ballet of syllables
sans effort (from me)
no need to pine
for a well-spun phrase
beginnings surround
ideas without form, first lines
silence beyond
an impatient gardener am i
checking roots
upending tender shoots
wishing not to wait
let an idea develop
as a good writer ought
inspired poems have come
and gone
bestowing charity
first stanzas nearly written
their relatives are sure to visit
some glorious future hour
demanding i take up
pen and parchment
dictate, translate
paint their reality
breathe life, texture
onto their bones
but not today
wrapped in quiet
a blanket, soothing
too slow for words
a moment in between
each content in our own doing
together
bowed over matter
we read, search, create
i am with two children
who bounce
as a rule
but not in this
unplanned sanctuary
how long do we have
nestled
in the emotional safety
of our muteness
I was nervous, but there was nothing to worry about. The kids in our children's theater company absolutely rocked at dress rehearsal today! They spoke clearly, stayed in character between lines, and nailed every song.
I could get hooked on the look of triumph that crosses a child's face when they finally get it, understand what a line means, and deliver it right on time, perfectly in character, especially if the child has been doubting themselves.
Another brick of belief in their own abilities is added to the foundation of their lives.
Intermission was a big party of smiles and high fives. We got carried away in the green room and hushed by a more level head on staff. She reminded us we better contain our enthusiasm during opening night, as the audience would lose the solemnity of the show created up to that point. Next weekend, when we're in front of people who paid to get a seat, people who haven't walked this road with us week after week, I'll do my part to keep the kids focused and harness their inner resources in order to maintain energy through the whole show, but right now, I can't keep quiet!
HAPPY DANCE!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
We welcome prayers and good thoughts for success during the next two weekends of shows.
i resist stillness
at dawn
prefer doing
believe coffee alone
be enough
send me
into the day
ready
i know better
pull a blanket
over my shoulders
feet, crossed legs
breathe into
morning meditation
words i've heard for years
sanity saving syllables
pour from my lips until
i recapture their meaning
move beyond the confines
of solitary concern
i nestle into love
seek images of my children
husband, neighbor, sick friend
who requests prayers
focus, close my eyes, again
half ready to spring up
conquer morning
as if guiding my soul
sending supplications
to our Creator
doesn't count... as if
i stay seated
my mind wanders
to homemade cookies
i don't pull my thoughts in
they're a litter of newborn kittens
wandering the confines
of their cardboard home
relieved to find mom
partake of her warm milk
knees up
i wrap my body tighter
under covers
shivering
i have a destination
an ending point preset
last word released
i float in silence
unravel one limb
at a time
emerge from
my cocoon
slower, listening
awake
Grandma Katz was growing weak, appearing older than her 76 years, afflicted with an illness that grows in the soil of a life time spent worrying, compulsively focusing on a perfection that lives ever on the planes of impossible. She lost weight and her ability to speak. She needed lots of sleep, to be fed like a baby.
I was her kin, so I sat at the kitchen table, listening as she struggled to be understood, when she may have only wanted to have a sip of water. The time and effort necessary to communicate that simple request was exhausting for caregiver and patient.
In February 1990, she went to the hospital. It was serious, so we were called to her bed side in a quiet wing, distinctly missing the bustling pace under the surface of relative calm normally associated with hospitals.
I spent most of my time down the hall, alone in an area full of couches and tables. I had a pair of head phones, several Simon and Garfunkel tapes and a bright yellow notebook. Now and then I wandered to my grandma's room, saw my aunt, grandma's caregiver Agnes, or my mom by her side, holding her hand laying on top of tan covers, stroking her thin, perm-scorched hair.
This scene was often silent.
I might linger in the doorway a moment but since I had nothing to offer, I would slip out again, head for that large comfortable lounge, turn on my music, open my spiral and write what I saw: the sun coming in the window just so; grandma laying there small and helpless; the immense quiet. I also wrote poems of flying, painted words of fire streaked sunsets and shared my hopes for the adult I would one day become.
I can still feel the motionless air of a hospital corridor brush past my face as I wandered about, knowing I couldn't feel impatient. I nearly filled the yellow spiral. Alone in my haven, I would leave the overhead lights off until the last bits of day light faded.
I was in another universe, a land of slow sadness, beautiful wondering, each breath a meditation. I wandered back and forth between the lounge where I was cocooned by my art and grandma's room. A few times I stood beside her, awkwardly whispering small talk and sympathy. It wasn't my place, to be a comfort. She would grow frantic if I stayed too long, convinced I was four years old and liable to wreak havoc.
Grandma didn't die at the hospital in February.
She went home, held on until December. I know her old house well, but no details of the mundane aspects of our visit have lasted. I remember my grandma in her bed. She was small. Her legs moved of their own accord beneath green covers, almost constantly. I could hear her raspy, labored breathing no matter where I was in her house. That hollow, endless sound penetrated every moment until she parted.
At this time in my life, I slept hard, was difficult to wake, aggressive toward anyone who disturbed me. But not December 18th, 1991 when I fell asleep to the rattle of my grandma's sighs. I slept on the special-company sofa in her decorative living room with a seldom used fire place, her prettiest furniture, and familiar ornaments collected over a lifetime.
I sat on the same couch with my grandma eleven years earlier, explaining the Baha'i Faith; to her, a mysterious religion her daughter disgraced the family by joining years before. This was the only time I had her full attention, no fretting, no discouraging remarks. My legs stuck straight out over the edge of a flower-printed cushion, grandma and I angled toward each other in deep conversation. I explained progressive revelation, the teaching that religious truth is revealed by God in stages and through different Teachers or Prophets who come to various parts of the world, over time. She wanted to understand, earnestly repeating the same questions.
Normally, my grandma was busy cooking and cleaning, usually afraid, often uncomfortable, muttering phrases of discontent and insecurity, anger that things weren't better and frustration that her daughters were a disappointment. Just us on that big couch, together in the middle, her listening respectfully, having a regular kind of conversation, was golden to eight years old Heidi.
I woke just before 8am December 19th, when an unseen force drew me off the couch to her bedroom doorway. My mom woke at the same moment. We met there, beneath a pale wood frame, unexplainably aware that we were witnessing grandma's last breaths, that this was a time for her to be alone, an invisible shield keeping us at a respectful distance.
Right now Carlos Nakai Earth Spirit is playing on Pandora. I listened to his calming flute music the miracle morning my first son was born. Now I listen again as I re-experience the moment my grandmother was born into the Abha Kingdom*.
O God, I didn't know I had any sadness left for her parting, anything I'd miss, then I saw us in the pretty living room, grandma with her only grand daughter, talking the way I wish we could have done often while she was alive in body.
I have talked with her many times since that winter morning she left earth. With her new arms, she's hugged me and comforted me through countless painful times in my young adult life. She even jokes around and cracks me up. Once, crying in the cemetery, looking for her head stone, I rested on the grass, opened my Prayer Book and said, “This is for every soul in the grave yard.” Out of nowhere, I heard her say in an exaggerated, playful tone, “What about me?” As I laughed, I was filled with warmth and a sense that she sat down beside me. We prayed together.
*The spiritual world our spirits live in after we shed our bodies, referred to by many as Heaven
This is a revision of " When Grandma Died." I shared it my second day (fifth post) on Open Salon.
In my early twenties, I drove in amazingly beautiful and equally dangerous weather.
The first time, on a bright afternoon, snow flew in swirling masses toward the windshield. I could only see a a few feet beyond the hood. I was in a sideways funnel, easing down the highway at 20mph, listening to two feet of snow crunch beneath radials I never checked for tread or air.
The second time, in the middle of the night, I drove fifty miles through a torrential downpour that caused tall waves to completely block my view of two different cars that seemed to be aiming for my little Ford Escort. I never knew if I was seeing my headlights reflected in the water wall or real life cars coming my way, only to vanish behind that majestic liquid barrier at the last second. Each time the water receded, the other cars had disappeared.
Through both the winter storm and summer flood (by morning, a good portion of the area I drove through was under water, buildings included), I was dazzled by nature's grand performance, too young and uninformed to worry. I knew there was risk, but I didn't dwell there. I smiled into the feeling of being enveloped in a snowy whirl dancing against gray sky. I marveled that I could experience mini tidal waves on I-90 at 1am, an almost lone traveler of the mystic moonlit morning.
If I had known what I was getting into, I surely would have stayed put. I'm not down on the benefits of knowing severe weather is imminent and taking necessary precautions like stocking up on provisions or not going on spontaneous road trips to see people who aren't expecting you but know you roll like that and love these irregular surprises (yes, that's why I drove through a blizzard and I did get to visit), but I dearly miss being amazed rather than prepared and finding sheer and undiluted delight in beautiful though potentially dangerous experiences.
These days, I breathe through the edges of panic staying just calm enough to perserve rational thought and reaction when caught in hazardous driving conditions, no matter how beautiful. Thanks to yahoo and company, I'm too aware of other people's stories and the potential for disaster. I'm also responsible for protecting a couple small people who count on me to keep them safe. I'm such a mother bear.
Okay, make this giant mental leap with me. This is a blog after all and not a place to make sense every time.
I begin to wonder if our connectedness to news and each other distracts today's young people from fully experiencing similar situations, as well as day to day life, and reduces their opportunities to have encounters with themselves.
I vacillate between being envious at how easy staying in touch with childhood friends will be for this generation of newly emerging adults and their juniors, on the one hand, but then feel a twinge of sorrow that they will miss a kind of solitary exposure to wonder we had to deal with like it or not. I do not wish to give up being able to transmit an image of my latest baking experiment to 410 friends and chit chat about the joys of finally nailing a recipe for gluten free whatever (this sahm welcomes adult conversation), but I have an early foundation of life without the option of constant connection.
Countless times, I was held captive by the confines of a quiet aloneness that couldn't be remedied by logging on. There was no such thing in my world. I know I've always had a land line, but what of three in the morning or in a crowd of strangers away from home. I couldn't entertain myself by texting pictures of the wares on headless mannequins in Macy's store front as I wandered by, blandly thinking I might like to wear a similar outfit to school next day, knowing my message would soon be received and responded to.
Instead I was alone in the field of my mind, one foot in front of the other from point A to point B. Books, paper, pen, markers, a walkman. These were my tools. I could dance, create or feel sorry for my lonesome self. Once I settled down to the work of listening, translating my inner world into words, designs and colors, I experienced a kind of contentment.
I didn't wish to be there all the time and sought out friends regularly, but how often were any of us unaware of who might be at our cafe table on a given night. Without the habit of cell phone updates informing who's where, why and how, I believe we had more opportunity for becoming comfortable in our own skin, come what may.
Ah, I'm reaching the underlying second thought now. I am grateful for home internet, facebook, my cell phone, email, Open Salon (more than I can express), feeling the world contract into a nation, but I miss a certain element of surprise in everyday life that comes from not knowing quite so much, from being thrust into life, able to only share observations with my own thoughts. I can keep the cell phone in my pocket or laptop in its case, but I'm making a choice, and not simply existing with only the experience itself, no options.
I'm not naïve, I realize we're better off now, being informed and able to more often prevent disaster, to connect, reach out, communicate and share treasures. I just sincerely hope young people are experiencing opportunities to get to know themselves through times of imposed, unplanned solitude and natural wonder.
Someday I may wrangle these thoughts into a more coherent whole or two wholes. Then again, maybe not. Expositional writing is not a skill I've developed as it requires a mental organization that feels like a physical work out. Hmmm... an opportunity to explore uncharted mental territory?? Maybe I ought to try someday. For now, I offer them as starting points for deeper exploration of whatever you get from my rambling.