the view over here

The Life of Babies

2011-09-20T19:16:00.000-04:00

I've been thinking about it a lot. Babies have got it right; they're the only ones who really know how to live life. Babies are too young to have been properly thought-programmed by their elders. They don't yet know to believe that money, fame, the right street, the right career, the right person, or the right pair of shoes is what makes for happiness. A baby's happiness comes from whatever is in front of them at the moment. It bubbles up uncontrollably, not because of some particular outside influence, but because the happiness is in them already—all they do is let it out. Because they habitually express what is in them, a baby lives a life of complete authenticity. If they don't like something, they spit it out, stop playing with it, or refuse to pick it up in the first place. They never second-guess themselves, they like what they like, want what they want, and do what they do because it's inherent in them to be that way. Babies live completely as they are, acting just as they were created. They cry when they're sad or angry, laugh when they're happy, eat when they're hungry and sleep when they're tired. And they never worry about anything. They don't obsess over what happened yesterday or spend all their time thinking about what they’re going to do tomorrow. A baby lives for what's happening now. Have you ever watched a baby discovering something new? Their whole existence becomes about that one moment of discovery. Even if you try to distract them, you can't. But when they've learned all they can, they move on to the next discovery in the next moment. Life for a baby is an endless string of pearled moments of discovery, one after the other. Because a baby lives in this present way, they never hold a grudge. They may be upset and crying one moment, but when the next moment rolls around, they're smiling, laying a head on your shoulder, forgiving whatever wrong-doing you may have committed. Babies also don't know how to judge yet. A baby does not care about the color of another baby's skin, their religion, or in what country they were born. To them, there’s just another baby—quite like themselves. And they will smile at anyone from any denomination who takes a moment to try and make them smile. Babies love like this because they haven't yet learned how to hate. I wonder sometimes what our world would be like if we weren’t so conditioned by our up-bringing’s, if our worlds of influence did not fill our heads with ideas of who and what we should be, who and what we should like, who and what we should hate. I wonder, what kind of a world it would be if we took a few lessons from those younger than we and lived, in certain aspects, the life of babies.

Remembrance

2011-09-13T16:21:00.000-04:00

Sometimes I forget
what’s important
in life
kept busy
thinking
about next week
last week
or the week after next,

- kept occupied
recalling a moment gone
or planning a moment yet to come.

Sometimes I forget
the essence of life
exists
fully
only in this moment.

My breath brings me back again
to life lived
in a single heartbeat
lived
in the space between thoughts -

- where my essence
rests fully
at peace
with itself.

Gossamer Thoughts

2011-08-03T09:18:00.000-04:00

Many dreams I've weaved
with gossamer thread
each strand a-glitter
with ideas
concepts, beliefs
of who I am
a treasured collection
of bejeweled
colors:
red, gold,
purple, pink, maroon,
and green and black knotted stones of hard beliefs
—cold things I told myself
about myself.

I weaved through a long night
under twinkling stars
till at the edge of earth and time;
a dawning—

Creeping light
with stretching fingers
expands,
hits this
web of woven treasures,
jewels and knotted stones
each thought, impression, memory
—everything I know as Me.

Alights, crystallizes, glitters, glows and
in that dawning light—

—dissolves,
strands disintegrating...

Blinking
in this new light
I am aware
I see

my careful thoughts
so deftly woven,
the pretty veil I made for myself,
out of love, kindness, hope, despair, fear, desire and insecurity,
out of anger, rage, sadness, faith and blessedness

The very thoughts
I thought myself to be

—are nothing more than
gossamer threads that bind me.

Magnetisense

2011-08-02T16:24:00.000-04:00

I can't help it!
I am inevitably drawn
inward
by a magnetic force
so vast
so compelling
even the brightest sun
pales
by comparison.

Body Dissolution

2011-07-19T11:11:00.001-04:00

This body I adore
does not care about me.

When I leave—
this vessel
will willingly deconstruct.

Elemental units
I long thought of as myself
will disassemble
and become
worm food
fertilizer
ash.

Each tiny particle
happy
to disband
and reassemble into
a new entity.

Obstacle

2011-07-08T11:37:00.000-04:00

Imagine my surprise!
Upon learning—
I am my own greatest obstacle.

The Silent Seer Knows

2011-06-08T16:09:00.000-04:00

In the infinite space created
by attuned awareness to now
there’s a silent seer
watching through my eyes

Who knows;

There is no difference
between the breath in my body
and the wind that ruffles the leaves.

There is no difference
between my heart beating
and the rolling crash of the waves.

There is no difference
between the clouds in the sky
and the words scrawled across this page.

In the infinite space created
by attuned awareness to now
the silent seer knows—

—the truth about me.

Nature Girl....Or Not....?

2011-05-05T14:21:00.002-04:00

It’s made me wonder who I am, is what spring did.

As we go through life, we acquire ways of identifying ourselves, ways to relate our individual being to the world outside. If we have an affinity for music, we may labels ourselves musicians. If we're drawn to drawing, we might say we're graphic artists. If we are, inexplicably, excited by algebraic equations we could proclaim ourselves rocket scientists or mechanical engineers or at the very least math brainiacs. We have boundless external identifiers to choose from and it is the combination of natural inclination and environmental influence that leads us to conclusions about who we are and guide us into who we become.

Throughout my life, I have always thought of myself a ‘nature girl.’ If I made a list of my top ten personal identifiers and named them in order of dominance, ‘nature girl’ would be in the top three—right after ‘writer’ and before ‘dancer.’ An inherent curiosity combined with a childhood that included a horse ranch, a three hundred acre preparatory school, a thousand acre Ashram, and countless hours allowed to roam cultivated the nature girl within me. My favorite pastime was wandering through the woods or over fields with the birds and butterflies for company. I grew to love all of nature; rain, snow, sunshine, mountain tops, valleys, rivers, lakes, and streams. My love of the natural world also influenced my development as a person, I’m conscious of the environment and even my consumerism became naturally oriented, all my hair and cleaning products are biodegradable, my perfume is from natural essential oils, and even my diet is free from chemical influences.

This thing—nature—overwhelming and beautiful, inspiring and terrible, fascinating and dominating, became a part of who I believed myself to be.

Until recently.

Suddenly, without alteration of my inner self, without a mutation of my natural inclinations or a decline in my usual tastes, I cannot go outside! I have allergies, bad ones, thus the natural world I have long loved is now lost to me. If I should hope to refrain from being dreadfully ill, if I should hope to be able to continue to breathe—no longer can I roam the wilds.

It’s been a shock and has taken adjustment. You may imagine I would feel sad thinking on this—but as it happens I don’t anymore. Over the long course of our lives, we are constantly in flux, who we think of as ourselves today will be just a shadow come tomorrow. Change is the only certainty in this world but even through the course of change the essence of things remain. I am no longer able to go out into the wild to roam, but the fine seeds of that world were planted in my psyche and laid roots that extend beyond the physical. From the safety of my allergy-proof home, I remain a part of that brash wind, those groaning oaks, that amorous frog, and those earnest saplings, that optimistic grass, and the furious sunshine. I may no longer be able to justify the label ‘nature girl’ through my lifestyle but the way I see it is this:

You can take the girl out of the nature, but you can’t take the nature out of the girl.

And so, Nature Girl, I will remain—albeit an unusual one.

Treasures for my Love

2011-04-25T15:17:00.001-04:00

If I spent each afternoon
collecting treasures
bare feet soaking
molecules
of spring rain
from padded undergrowth,
ears tuned to raindrops
low, rumbling thunder,
and birdsong.

I would gather rocks for you--
round
pale gold
bright white
jagged crystalline
stones
weighted
in the palm of my hand
each bearing
a mystery composition
of its own.

Beneath a blue-washed sky
my pores absorbing oxygen
I would gather dripping, crooked branches
tiny flowers, heart-shaped leaves
salamanders, tadpoles and
smooth triangles of colored glass.

All these I would bring to you
every afternoon
so you would know
I love you.

Blood Inheritance

2011-04-01T15:30:00.000-04:00

Blood inheritance:
Priceless treasures held in trust—
Passed down through cheek bones.

It's when I'm quietest that the boat is really rocking. It's when I fall short of even the ability to write, that I know I've been hit at the core. Life, it seems, will do that at times. All we can do is face the tempest, wait for the rain to pass, the wind to die down, and the happy blue sky to reappear.

My grandfather passed away on March 18, 2011. It was 3:33 in the afternoon. He had been ill for two months, slowly fading from life via mesothelioma. He was 91 years old.

Papa passed away as he had lived, with the same sense of humor and ridiculous fun that characterized everything he did. Up until the day before he died, he was cracking jokes with my family and the last truly coherent thing he ever said to me was to ask, “What’s good in the family?”

Papa’s memory had not been great for years. It was faded thin, like a worn table cloth with holes all through it. Amazingly, with this irregular, spotty pattern, he only remembered the good stuff! Every story he told, every question he asked, everything he commented on was all about love, fun, and the re-telling of honored family stories. It was a pleasure to be around him. Even if I had to hear the same tale over and over again, it was fun to hear him tell it. He was animated when he talked, his eyes going wide, his arms throwing gestures. He loved life while he lived it, and then loved to bring the joy of his adventures back to whomever cared to listen.

Papa was physically big and strong and enjoyed great health for most of his life. When he became sick, they let us know the end would be soon. He lasted longer than we thought. It is my theory that Papa was stubborn. My grandmother, his lover for 72 years, agrees. Papa did not leave this earth until his body became absolutely incapable of supporting life. Only then did he let go. Left to him, he would have lived forever. He loved life and the people he shared it with that much.

My grandmother stood at the head of his bed when Papa passed away. She leaned over and stroked his cheeks while he took a few, last labored breaths. That was the truest and deepest expression of love I have ever seen. Even as tears streamed down her face, she murmured words of comfort to help him pass on. Under her touch, with her whispers in his ears, his face relaxed, and peacefully and easily he let go.

After he had passed away, my grandmother told me something that has fast become a law I will live by. She said, “What your grandfather and I had together was a whole lot of fun. I have always thought that people who don’t have fun are not trying hard enough. You have always got to try, and never quit trying, to make your life fun.”

While I knew him, my grandfather made my life fun. I was not alone; he had an impact on pretty much everyone he met. Google his name, Charlie Metro. The Internet is filled with pictures of his smiling face. Dashing and good looking, strong and charismatic, he left a legacy that I now understand I carry on.

Before the Storm

2011-03-15T13:12:00.002-04:00

There is a quiet I remember
from early child hood.

Alone in the horse pasture.

Dark mountains loomed
at the edge of the sky,
sentinels of time
watching over me.

Sun baked the dirt to fine dust
warmed my skin to soft brown
tinged my dark hair golden.

Cottonwoods murmured
leaves clinking
like shell chimes,
the sharp cry of magpies
accentuated stillness.

The peace of the earth
seeped in through my feet,
my mind stretched out
beyond the limits of sky.

I played
in sync with the world
suspended
without worry or thought
my breath
in easy beat with the day.

In the distance, the rolling of thunder.

Black clouds amassed
at the edge of the plain
too far to stir the dust at my feet
too distant to lift the hair from my brow.

Cocooned in silence
I sat
in the peace
that is greatest
before the storm.

Ring Around the Moon

2011-02-16T10:17:00.003-05:00

Written in honor of my dear friend, Subadra, and my dear friend and sister, Sumati. Dedicated to you and our moment spent philosophizing under the stars.

Ring Around the Moon

In the brisk cold
I stand—
held to earth by gravity
infinitesimally small
beneath the starry sky.

There’s a ring around the moon.
—An opaque circle
of pale clouds,
the white moon
at it’s epicenter.

This iris of the sky
stares into me,
sees facets
unexpressed—
a quiet rumbling undertow
in the ocean of my mind.

Parts not seen, but felt—
like shadows beneath the waves,
like that silhouette of night-dark clouds
against the open sky.

Hints of who I am
lurk
beneath my outer shell—
a silent self
only the moon's eye perceives.

Juniper, Alder & Elm

2011-02-14T10:21:00.001-05:00

Juniper, Alder, & Elm

Mine enemies have arrived
cloaked in the guise of friends.

Reigning Gods
of the natural world.
with swaying words
and the promise of all things
good and youthful--
they steal me
from myself.

In bitter solitude,
I await their slow decline.

Long months,
till their inevitable deaths
give me my life back again.

Slow-Motion Water Drop

2011-01-31T13:37:00.000-05:00

Slow Motion Water-Drop

I feel sadness
like a slow motion water drop

Realization hits,
ripples out in all directions.

The blue sky casting mountains
across the rocking surface
cannot convince me
that death
is not
the only certainty.

At the far edges,
waves calm to tremors,
memory provides respite:

...Mountains loomed
in the clear
of a Colorado morning,
your voice
billowed white
into early air.

My heart,
like the stomp and stamp of hooves,
rocked the morning.

The boom of your voice,
broad reach of your shoulders
convinced me;

I am the bristling early bird
who gets the worm.

Now,
in the still
of a water drop falling
my heart aches
becomes aware....

Ripples,
once made,
go on forever.

Painted Rocks

2011-01-05T14:58:00.000-05:00

Is it wrong that I want to paint tiny rocks
smoothed by wind and rain
into perfect, mini canvases?

What more useless way to spend my time
than turning something small
and perfectly good already
into a tiny turtle,
a bright green bug,
or a curled up garden snake?

Much better things have I to do
than sit for hours
till my hands and shoulders cramp
till light bleeds from blue to grey
and my no longer youthful eyes
strain on that fine detail
of the spotted markings
of a rattler

This pursuit is
utterly without purpose,
my skill not good enough to sell.
Once done,
with nothing grand to show,
I hide my creatures
in the damp earth of potted plants;
hidden gems
signifying a moment
I chose to do what I loved
for no earthly reason at all.

2010-12-20T12:55:00.002-05:00

Snowscape Haiku

#1

Bright, silver glitter
white moonlight on fallen snow--
winter's cold beauty

#2

Each icy raindrop
falling on the window pane--
chiming like a bell

#3

Fragile snowflake falls
drifting from a darkened sky--
unique and alone

Bones Don't Care

2010-11-15T10:49:00.006-05:00

(This is an exercise in rhyme written in honor of my recent Halloween activities with the Haunted Trail Walk. [www.hauntedtrailwalk.com] Participating as one of the un-dead got me thinking about bones.)

Bones Don’t Care

White,
like newly fallen snow,
pale against the drifting sand
sockets shine,
a purple glow,
in the shadowed land

Stark,
amidst the paler stones
slender limbs—no more they—
seek to hold
within their bones
warmth drawn from the day

Rocks,
so cold and colder still
pale day fades away to night
bones, once live,
preserve their will,
drag themselves upright

Clack,
and creak, they rise again
footsteps dark across the sand
weaving in the wild wind
pale bones stalk the land

Pale,
yet shining in the moon
liberated from their skin
on they go o’e hill and dune
remnants of our kin

Bones,
just like the ones we share
stagger through eternity
hollow shells that never care
who they used to be

Fried Potatoes

2010-09-28T12:53:00.001-04:00

I don’t often cook for my family anymore. I work full-time and don’t have the energy—or perhaps it’s the inclination—at the end of the day to go into the kitchen and prepare a meal. Fortunately, my husband (unemployed since last December), has taken on the role of house-husband and most evenings he cooks a meal for our family of seven.

I do miss cooking, so I often cook on weekends, preparing a family favorite or experimenting with something new.

Last Saturday morning I made Fried Potatoes as part our breakfast. I always fry my potatoes in the same skillet. A large stainless steel revere wear pan with a black plastic handle and a bottom warped from years of use. It’s not a great skillet but I can’t get rid of it because it belonged to my mother.

She gave this skillet to me years ago when the ratio of my six kids to hers tipped over; hers were leaving just as mine were still arriving. She knew I needed a larger skillet to keep my growing crew fed, so she passed it on to me.

I grew up poor, many people did, and food was sometimes hard to come by. We never starved, but neither did we have those convenience foods my children now enjoy. We didn’t eat boxed cereal, or bags of chips, cheese slices, or jars of juice or soda and almost never had candy bars or ice cream. We ate whole foods like oats and wheat cereal, fresh fruits and vegetables, and lots of and beans and rice.

My mother had six children, as I do, and every night she set our table with a meal. We were never hungry but staples are not the most fun foods to eat. My mother has an indomitable sense of fun. She believes it doesn’t matter how much you have, but what kind of experience you choose to create with what you have that makes life enjoyable. With my mother, I have sat at the kitchen, dressed in a nightgown and make-up, playing cards, I have learned to make grape jelly from grapes we picked in our back yard, I’ve made bread and biscuits, pizza and cinnamon rolls all from scratch. I’ve had picnics and sleepovers where we cordoned off one room for music and danced. I had very little from the standpoint of what you could measure in material wealth growing up, but from my mother I learned how to take what you have—no matter what that is—and make it fun.

On Sundays, all my growing years, my mother made us a big breakfast just for fun. It was a celebration of family and also a chance to eat our favorite foods. Traditionally, it consisted of pancakes with orange sauce and maple syrup, soya sausages and, of course, fried potatoes. My mother is a master at putting a complex meal together, and she was brisk, the heat making her face glisten as she hustled about the kitchen, assigning tasks to her fledgling cooks. We each had a job to do and mine was often to watch the potatoes.

My mother cut her potatoes in slim wedges, peels on. Today, I peel mine and chop them into one inch squares. The shapes of the potatoes may differ, but the procedure is the same. Chop them, drop them into hot oil and let them fry. I learned how to flip them without dumping them over the edges of the pan, I learned the timing for how long to let them fry before they needed flipping, I learned when to sprinkle the salt and how much was the right amount of pepper. I learned all I needed to know and took it with me into my own motherhood.

Over the years, amidst the bustle of the Sunday cooking, my mother often commented on how this skillet was the same make and style as the one her father had used when made fried potatoes for her and her sisters in the tradition of their family.

On Saturday, I repeated the fried potato ritual as I had many times before. I grasped the handle of the warped-bottom skillet, ready to flip and felt the ghost of my mother’s hand in the plastic. I felt a link, stretching back through my bloodlines to my mother then beyond her into my grandfather. I realized, I was a third generation potato fryer, and felt this simple act unite us as family as absolutely as the color of our hair, or the shade of our skin.

One of my children has left home and the next one down is right behind him. I fed four kids with the potatoes I fried on Saturday. I stood before the heat, with potatoes popping and frying, remembering my ancestors and wondered which one of my kids would inherit this skillet once my need for it is done.

September Morning

2010-09-01T15:22:00.002-04:00

September morning—
Dancing in your mist-wreathed skirt
You beckon Autumn

For the Hills and Valleys of Home

2010-08-17T16:57:00.003-04:00

I dreamt about Peebles last night, the place fresh in my mind after our recent sojourn through the Tweed Valley.

I’m a sucker for places, this is what I’ve come to realize.

I can’t explain why I’m easily seduced by the lay of a certain land or the look of light falling across those mountains, or tripping across that river. Land speaks to me and when I like what I hear, I fall for a place.

This is how I’m in love with the Tweed Valley in the Scottish Borders. If you’ve been there, you understand why—if not, you should plan a trip; it’s unforgettable.

I first visited Peebles when seventeen whilst coming back from the touristy Loch Ness. I swam naked in Loch Ness and what I can tell you about that experience is; don’t underestimate the midges. Despite their diminutive name and size, they do some bodily damage. The water at Loch Ness was inky black and icy, perfect for a swim. We stayed in a small bed and breakfast and what struck me then was the red of the setting sun, streaking across a midnight sky. By the time I awoke, early as usual, the sky was already bright with sun.

When we drove into the tweed valley, winding down an impossible road between green sloping hills, my chest shuddered, as if a bird struggling to take flight. The insides of me hummed; I drank in the sharp contrasts of green fields and low, rolling sky, white sheep and dark shale. From the first moment I lay eyes on this valley, I have wanted to live there.

Life is not so easy as this, allowing us to simply follow the trail of a yearning, commitment and responsibility get in the way.

I’ve gone two more times since that first glimpse and each time, my experience has been the same. Some sleeping part of me awakens; I come alive. It reminds me of the quickening in the Highlander series. I almost feel as if my hair was standing on end and lightning bolts shooting out my ears. I almost feel immortal.

Last week, we rode again through the hills dropping down into Walkerburn and Innerleithen, then on to Peebles. The weather was variable, meaning it rained, then the sun shone brightly and skimmed the wet grass with sparkling light. Then it rained. Then the sun shone brightly. Then it rained. Then the sun shone brightly. Over and over again all day long. Every time the sun broke through those fickle Scottish clouds, I took off my rain jacket and polar fleece and said, “My, what a beautiful sunny day!” Then, when the storm clouds rolled in and the rain began to pour, “I love the rain!” That day was my favorite weather ever. Not a moment to brood over a hot sun or rainy sky. Before you could grow weary of what was—it had already changed. We walked for miles in that town; to and from the pub, to and from the coffee shop, the crisp, clean air filling my lungs, allowing me to breathe. That’s another thing I love of the North; air I can actually breathe.

These days, I’m seriously considering places to live, knowing it would be best for me to leave this polleny place I have long called home. It was inevitable that Peebles should creep into my mind and tap on the inside of my skull. This time when visiting, I looked at it with a new eye, asking, “Could I live here? Would I be happy in this place, with these mountains, by this river, raising my children, cooking dinner, dancing, and dreaming my life into being, wishing for things or crying over disappointments?” It’s an impossible question to answer, based solely on the spare days I’ve spent in the valley. But, like I said, places speak to me and when I think of Peebles I hear this river and the slant of these mountains and the slope of that valley calling me home.

Speaking of England....

2010-06-28T08:45:00.002-04:00

Ah, life--never a dull moment with you.

Everyone says life can change in a flash. When it happens to you, you don’t really notice. Our car accident changed my life, but not in a way that directly makes sense. Or maybe it does—in a convoluted, everything-is-connected, things-happen-for-a-reason, philosophically-oriented sort of way.

It's hard to find that thread at first. We hit a tree in late 2008 and now we're moving to England. How are these two things connected? One could ask, and not immediately come up with an answer because it all started way back when I was twelve. Or thirteen. Something like that.

I have been sick forever. My symptoms have never changed, but those docs kept slapping diagnosises on me like they were the latest fashion jeans. I have been tested and diagnosed with a lot of things, and given treatments that never worked up until I got sick of doctors and stopped seeing them as they never did me any good anyway.

Then, we hit a tree. I had to see a doctor then. With very bad whiplash, it was the only sensible thing to do. Recovery from that included an initial round of muscle relaxers and heavy duty pain-killers, followed by the more “me-friendly” applications of yoga, chiropractic treatment, and exercise.

Come February, 2009, I was still feeling pretty bad. I caught a flu, nothing to worry about, just a cold and a cough that came on quite suddenly. I wasn't going to see a doctor for it, but my youngest son was sick, too. I thought, as I'm going in, why not let them have a listen to me while I was there? It couldn’t hurt and my lungs did sound gurgley. This turned out to be one of those accidentally brilliant decisions. I had 'silent lungs' which, as an asthma sufferer will tell you, is not a good thing to have. It means a portion of your lungs have become so inflamed, the air has been trapped inside them, preventing good things from happening, such as getting enough oxygen. Silent lungs will get a doctor hustling. I had some kind of breathing treatment immediately, a scrip written for oral steroids and was given an albuterol inhaler. My son, as it happens, was perfectly fine.

Thus began my love affair with asthma. Do not get asthma if you can avoid it; it is not fun.

Though no doctor has ever said it, I think my asthma finally appeared out of the blue at forty years old due to the car accident. The spinal column is your nerve center, with all communication to and from that master planner, the brain, running through it, out to our extremities and vital organs and then back to the brain. It seems to me that the hit my upper back took from that tree could certainly trigger a condition that might have lurked in me for years. Once I got my inhaler and used it a few times, I realized I had been having asthma symptoms all my life, I just hadn't realized that tight-chested, breathlessness was an asthma attack. It was a normal part of my world, and only with the inhaler did I realize it was correctable.

Asthma. One more diagnosis to add to my list. I wanted to know why I had asthma. I always want to know why. It doesn’t matter what it is, I want to know why it is. One type of asthma is allergy induced. At some point, I had been diagnosed with allergies to chemicals. I knew you could also be allergic to other things. In talking with my doctor, we opted to get me a thorough allergy panel and see if there was more going on than the chemical sensitivity.

If you could see me now, you would realize, I am laughing out loud. It’s funny, but in that very awful sort of way. I was tested for 70 allergens. I tested positive to 43. If you've read this blog before now, this won't be news to you. As it turns out, allergies is what I've been suffering from forever—those same set of symptoms with multiple diagnosises turned out to be allergies plain and simple. Well, plain, maybe--but not so simple.

It's hard to be that allergic. You feel as if everything is making you sick because, in fact, it is. Once I found out, I dutifully took two doses of antihistamines daily as prescribed. Everyone asked if they made me feel sleepy. Are you kidding? I have been fighting chronic fatigue since I was twelve years old; antihistamines finally gave me some of my energy back. I have often wondered if being so sick is why I simultaneously became focused on health. I eat a great diet. I work out. I practice stress-reduction techniques. I drink gallons of water, I limit my fat and sugar intake. My blood-work is beautiful. I realize now, I have to do all of that--just to feel reasonably well. I have fatigue so crippling at times, I feel as if I am dragging myself through quicksand and I can get sick in a minute, seemingly out of the blue. At any moment, on any given day, I can come across something that knocks me out. That is what being highly allergic is like. It’s like being repeatedly ambushed by the world. I would do anything to avoid being made sick. It’s just not easy to know what to do.

All of this leads us up to this Spring. I was taking antihistamines, I was feeling really good. Life was happy and I was happy in it. I planted a big garden. That same one I went on about in my last post. I enjoyed every moment of fresh air and planting until the pollen started to kick. Being out side in pollen is like having fine sand thrown in my eyes all day. I itched, I coughed and I relied on my antihistamines to protect me.

In my defense, I have only known I've had allergies for one year, so I'm not the smartest patient in understanding how to deal with them. Avoidance is, apparently, the best measure. I was not fully aware of this going into Spring. We had record pollen levels in VA and by April 15th, having overexposed myself to the blooming world, I was sick. I was Patagonia Dreamin' because it hurt to breathe. It hurt to think, to move my eyes. My joints ached, my muscles cramped. I dragged through every day at work and collapsed once I got home. I had lost my beautiful life, once again, to ill health.

In trying to recover, I locked myself indoors, cried over the loss of my beautiful garden which I couldn’t tend, cried over the loss of my horses which I could no longer care for, and cried over the loss of the outside world, which I loved. After all the crying, I took a good, hard look at my life. I realized I needed to do things differently. Of course, I talked with doctors first. What that boiled down to was a recommendation I go on low-level steroids. With my sensitive nervous system, they might as well book me a white-walled room now. I've been on oral steroids; they are not good for my mental health.

On occasion, I tend to show slightly obsessive tendencies, particularly when I have a problem to sort out. Understanding pollen was my problem, I became obsessed with learning about pollen and how to avoid it. It turns out, there is pollen everywhere. With the exception of Siberia are the top and bottom of the globe, pollen a part of the natural world I love so well. But, this is not the end of the story. There are places that have better pollen profiles. Cool, rainy climates, with shorter growing seasons mean that pollen exposure is minimized. Mountainous regions also have this same affect. Can anyone say...Patagonia? I can't really move to southern Argentina. It’s not practical, but there is a place I can move that looks much better from a pollen perspective. Can anyone say...England?

Lucky for me, I married a Brit.

We’re moving. Once the house sells, we’re going to a place less plagued by pollen levels and I will, hopefully, for the first time in my life, breath a little easier and itch a little less.

Cheerio, peeps! Onward, ho!, to Britain!

Garden Ahoy!

2010-05-11T15:26:00.003-04:00

Each year as frost gives way to budding grass, and the stark shells of the trees get fleshed out with foliage; we begin to plan the garden. It's a favorite late-winter past-time, a ritual my husband and I have re-played for years.

In our early life together, we had big dreams. Back then, we didn't merely wish to grow a couple of vegetables, a few herbs and shrubs. We wanted to live off-the-grid, to be self-sufficient. At 19 and 24, as we ourselves were just starting to grow, we read everything we could find about passive solar heating, grey-water septic systems, composting toilets. We read how to build pole-and-beam straw bale houses, earth bermed houses, and tire-rammed earthships aligned to face the south so the long, angled windows running across the front would let the most light in during the winter months to grow indoor vegetables and the least light in during the summer-time to keep the place cool. In between planning and dreaming, life moved on. We worked our day-jobs, and one baby, then two and then two and two more came along. Somewhere on that journey, the dream slipped away, lost to the reality of raising six children.

But, the love for gardening never budged. Each year, as February drew to a close, we would haul out the seed catalogs and plan out our garden. Many years, that was as far as we got and the dream of the dirt patch of veggies remained a dream as every Saturday was given over the Soccer games and grocery shopping, clothes shopping, and trips to the mall. We let go because we had to; stretched as thin as we were, even one more thing would have been one more thing too many.

Even though we didn’t have a physical garden, the love for it remained, dormant like a seed over winter, waiting for the right conditions to spring forth.

Once in a while, extreme stress is the greatest catalyst for change. Raising six kids is not easy. It is constant hard work. Rewarding, yes, but close to all-consuming. Anyone who has worked at that kind of pace knows, eventually, the foundation begins to crack. You can only give up everything you love to do for so long. As the stress builds up, it wears you down and like a small animal trapped in a hole, you begin to look for ways out of the rut. In our attempt to survive the pressures of our lives, we remembered gardening. We recalled plotting out the land, ordering seeds, and those long hours spent in the early spring sun. It had been years since we’d had a proper garden, but last year, we decided to plant again.

Last winter, we plotted, last spring we planted. We were still over-worked, over-tired, over-stressed, but when we stepped out into the yard, things were growing and we were eating them. Fresh basil and tomatoes off the vine, two kinds of squash, more pole beans than we knew what to do with. We had cucumbers, kale and collards, a few brave carrots and beats, and a spattering of spring mix as our earliest crop of the season.

It was inspiring to see things grow, to feel the cool of the earth and the warm sun shining. It was encouraging to see we actually had time, if we made the effort, that we could take at least a little of that long ago dream and weave it into the lives we led now. Our garden was a success!

This February we began, even more inspired.

As of this day, May 14, 2010 we have planted: spring mix, carrots, kale, collards, spinach, tomatoes, bell and jalapeno peppers, three kinds of squash, corn, potatoes, watermelon, peas, beats, turnips, radishes, onions, sunflowers, cauliflower, basil, oregano, cilantro, chamomile, rosemary, strawberries, and probably a few other things I’m forgetting. We’ve been eating fresh greens and radishes for a couple of weeks now and everything else is coming on well.

I don’t think either of us are seriously considering a life off the grid at the moment—at least not before the kids leave home. These days, our garden is haven, a sanctuary of peace and contentment. It is a chance to remember our dreams. Moving through life, so many things fall to the side, pushed away by responsibility. Doing this one thing, simply for the love of doing it, makes our lives better. There’s simplicity in gardening: when weeding, we weed, when tilling, we till. There is nothing else beyond these simple tasks, nothing to worry over or plan for, there's just the dirt, the green things growing and the bright sun overhead.

Patagonia Dreamin'

2010-05-04T16:31:00.009-04:00

If I could, I would move to Patagonia where the mountain air blows clean down the hills and the sun sets in angles over the steppes. I found this place through fantasy-escape-mode, a very handy mental tool I employ when things get bad in my real world, such as being an allergy-sufferer in the worst pollen season in recollection. It was on a Monday that I hit the search engine and typed 'pictures of mountains.' I wanted something lofty and majestic to put as my desk-top background so that, in between my clerical tasks, I could escape to another land. I searched for mountains and that is where the love-affair began.

A picture popped up: low steppes with a herd of horses grazing and snow-tipped peaks rising into the sky. I can't explain what happened to me when I saw this place. My mind stilled, settled into itself. I imagined cool, dry air flowing into my lungs. I imagined lying on the stony ground, the wind rustling the grass around me, the sky stormy-blue overhead. This picture called to me. If this were Star Trek, I would have said, "Beam me over, Scotty." Even the soles of my feet wanted to walk barefoot over those stones.

Still, it was just a picture. I had no real idea where this was. However, I did want to know.

I have the kind of imagination that, once activated, is a bit like a baking soda and vinegar project. Once two things combine (place and longing) a chemical reaction occurs that cannot be stopped; it has to run its course. I did a new search to see if I could locate to origin of my fantasy-picture. Did I mention determination and persistence as part of this potion? Once my mind sets to a track, it does not deviate until the mission is accomplished. It was easy to discover the picture was taken in Argentina Patagonia. Patagonia! A word of legend, buried in my psyche like a forgotten bicycle in an old garage. Did I actually know anything about Patagonia, or was it the romance of the name I found alluring?

I searched google maps and found Patagonia as the southern-most region in South America, bridging the mountains between Argentina and Chile. I looked at the map and asked myself a question. Where, along that mountain range, did I think my fantasy-picture was taken? Of course, I had no reference beyond the photograph, so I opted to utilize instinct and see where it got me. It got me to El Chalten, a tiny town located in Los Glaciares National Park, population 200. I pulled up pictures from the region, which is now heralded as one of the fastest growing tourist spots for back-packer, hikers, and mountain-climbers, and recognized a distinctive mountain peak from the photograph: Mt Fitzroy. I had found my dream destination!

El Chalten is a rare town, situated within a national preserve. There are few year-long residence, but they host a rapidly growing number of tourists each year. Being at the more southern sphere of the globe, they have alternate seasons to the ones we have here in Virginia. Their peak summer season is in January and February, when we’re bundling up around wood stoves and under blankets. From the little I have learned, they have a cool, relatively dry, unpredictable climate. Wind is a near-constant companion and the weather can change in a flash. The hike to give you the best view of Fitzroy takes two days and is, by the accounts I read, not too strenuous and worth the effort. Their winters are cold, and windy, but not as harsh as their far northern counter-parts. And the park is stated by all who visit to be spectacular year-round. I say, what’s not to like?

Aside from the notable absence of over-abundant greenery, other things appeal to me about Patagonia. I like extremes of light, like the high-northern slant of sun seen in Scotland. I like unpredictable weather, perhaps because I’m used to unpredictability from a life of living inside my own head. I like rolling steppes, sparse population, and strongest of all, I like the Andes Mountains. I can't say what draws me to them; they exert some pull over which I have no domain. They call to me by name. In the center of my being, I feel their echo. Is it because I grew up under the looming presence of another mountain range, the Colorado Rockies? It is something imbedded in my Native American genetics that makes me wish to live in close proximity to their majesty?

I can't answer these questions. I’ve never been very good at explaining myself to myself. The best I can say is I know I want to be there, that, part of me, while sitting in Virginia, smelling the first of the Honeysuckle bloom, longs to be far away, living in Patagonia.

Patagonia:
Patagonia

Mountain air
sweeps down the hills.
Sun sets in gold angles
over the steppes.
Horses mill, grazing
in the shadows of snow-tipped peaks.

Cool air
breathes rustling grass
over stony ground,
scatters horses before
the wind.

Howls echo down the canyon;
phantom hunters
chase the cries of their prey
from the tip of Fitz Roy
down sheer cliffs
into the breath in my mouth
freezing
ice caps behind my lips
that clack in the dusk
like tumbling stones.

At home
in this barren expanse
of isolation
where bright stars
mirror
a thousand dead dreams,
my heart
soars
over peaks and into
impossible sky
beyond
tumbling into desire
and longing.

Even the souls of my feet
wish to walk
barefooted
over the stones
of Patagonia.

Spring = Depression

2010-04-26T16:54:00.000-04:00

No season is waited for with such longing as is Spring. Shaking off the cold of winter, the entire world bursts forth. Trees pollinate, plants propagate, and all variety of animals bring their own fierce joy to the season by mating. Baby everything’s are born, flowers, calves, sheep, horses. After that quiet dead of winter, all is renewed, alive, awake and ready to play. All, that is, except the allergy sufferer.

I found out I had allergies last year after developing asthma; prior to that my mysterious ill-health wore many cloaks: IBS, CFS, MCS, MDI, Fibromyalgia. Because I have a-typical symptoms, not the classic rhinitis, no one was looking at my collection of symptoms as being related to allergies. It took asthma to connect the dots. My lack of ability to breathe had to come from somewhere. We looked around and found, through allergy testing, that I am allergic. I am not violently allergic to any one thing, for which I am grateful. Instead, I am low-level allergic to many things; 43 things out of the 70 tested for, to be exact. After a lifetime of mystery illness, suddenly I have a name: allergies. I have indoor allergies, outdoor allergies, pet allergies, allergies to mold, food allergies, and early, mid and late season allergies to trees, weeds, and grasses. In short, the entire blooming world is making me feel sick! Faced with those kinds of odds, late last year, I began a regime of anti-histamines. Anti-histamines are wonderful. I no longer itch twenty times a day; I do not have repeated violent bouts of abdominal pain, my knees are not swelling, my joints don’t ache and, best of all, I can breathe.

My anti-histamines brought me relief over the winter months, while closed up with dogs and dust-mites, and so I headed into Spring with optimism and good cheer, believing I would manage to skip by, unscathed, through pollen season and into the heady summer.

I did not know then what I know now. The uncomfortable physical symptoms that had plagued me all of my grown life are not the greatest burden of an allergy sufferer. My anti-histamines, gallant though they are, cannot completely quell the itching, swelling, sneezing, wheezing, coughing, and aching joints that accompany my allergic reactions to the most pollinated spring in known memory. They did a pretty good job of it. Had it been only for those, I would not complain. But, allergies have an undertow, a hidden foe that lives beneath the radar, a shadow condition that no one talks about and that is Allergy-Induced Depression.

I have always hated the Spring. Each April, as the world around me bursts forth in plant life and song, I want to crawl into bed, pull the covers over my head and sleep and until I somehow feel well enough to be alive. Over time, I came to accept this aberration of my mood unique to spring. I identified this time of year as one where I, in contrast to all else around me, wanted to go into hibernation while everything else was coming out. What I did not fully realize until this very Spring was the reason behind my desire to hibernate. My anti-histamines do a very nice job of keeping the other symptoms at bay; they do nothing for the lead-headed, mind-numbed, slowed-way-down, utterly exhausted feelings arising from allergy-induced depression. I know it is not my life. I love my husband, my children, my community, and my place of employment. I have a multitude of good things going on I wish to continue. My life is not to blame. The problem is in my brain, my broken brain, like a clock that has seasonally stopped ticking, even now, I cannot say when my brain will begin to tick again.

Secret Keeper

2010-04-07T14:35:00.001-04:00

Secret Keeper

Will you be my secret keeper:
skeleton key
to my dungeon heart

Will you stand beside me
on the stone stair
feet shivering
awaiting
white clad phantoms
as they race by
seeking light
their faces
masks
I always know

I live in the castle
above the vaults:
sheer walls reflecting light
turrets rising skyward
noble, stony face

I pretend
there is no dungeon
no dark birds flying to roost
no screeching bats clinging to stalactites

In the inky dark,
cold is never colder
and alone is all I know

I seek to
reject those bottom layers
ignore the subterranean roar
of a waterway
in the belly of my earth

To stand atop my tower,
gossamer gown floating
eyes on every sunrise
as if only golden light
exists

I would abandon
my pale phantom
that little girl
who sits
alone

Except for you, gate keeper,
you stand
strong bones planted to the stone
soft skin smooth over muscle
five fingers linked through my own

Beside me
as the phantoms whirl
you hold
the secrets of my heart

2010-03-08T09:38:00.002-05:00

My mind turns with the season
emerging
towards the sun
tender ideas
stretch to an open sky

from the dark depths
of my inner world
I waited
for illumination

for the soft breath of spring
to breathe me
back into being
my collective self

Seasons of Snow and Rain

2010-02-22T17:11:00.001-05:00

It's funny, the circles life makes. At exactly this time last year, I was longing for snow. I remember that feeling, how I watched the weather forecast and the sky, hoping.

This winter, without hoping, without bone-deep longing, snow fell all over the place. Our first snow came before Christmas. A most inconvenient time, it didn't even slow us down. We still had shopping to do, parties to plan and attend. That snow came and went with just a whisper of its passing left on my psyche.

It snowed again. That time, I got out, left my house and walked amid the scent and silence of freshly fallen snow. I loved it.

Since then, I've been trying to figure out why.

Last winter, we slipped off the barest minimum of ice and hit a tree head-on. In the wake of that event, I had whiplash—which I still deal with—and a biting fear of slick and icy roads. Anytime our vehicle seemed to skid sideways, my hands gripped the seat, my heart began to pound.

This winter, I have experienced a lot of seat-gripping, heart-pounding while riding and driving. This winter, we’ve had more snow that I can ever recall. I’ve been forced to traverse roads once determined impassable. I've driven on ice, snow, and inches of deep slush. I've slipped over road-ways to get to the store, to work, and to the gas station for fuel for the generator. I've shoveled, pushed and prayed more than one vehicle out onto the roads then shook in my boots to drive on them.

For a while, anyway.

Desensitization does appear to be a genuine and effective way of overcoming one’s fear. As the days wore on and the snow became a permanent VA fixture, I got used to the terror of driving. I got so now I don’t even blink at an icy patch, don’t even flinch if I slip-skid off to the left or veer completely side-ways. I’ve adjusted to my new, snowy landscape and Eskimo style of living.

You may imagine, then—as the old saying goes—the familiarity of the snow would breed contempt, that I like nearly everyone I know would grow tired of sloshing through snow drifts and dealing with all those unpleasant side-effects of this weather: no electricity, no phone, every day a long hike up a steep drive. You would imagine these would mar or at least somewhat diminish my affection for snow.

I remain enamored, delightfully enchanted whenever it begins to fall. I wrap up in running pants, under armor, long sleeved knitted shirt, wool socks pulled over my pants, carhart overalls, a long-sleeved wool top, my coat, my hat, then my boots and out I go into the crisp, cold air. I breathe deeply, drinking it in and stand amazed by the fairy world I behold. I can't help that my eyes love to look on a snow-coated landscape. I can’t help that my lungs love to breathe cold air. Every single thing about snow makes me happy: crystallized tree-tops, the crunch of my boots in the diamond strewn fields, the stillness with just the occasional bird chirping and flitting from limb to limb, the dark of the trees, stark against this white backdrop, the contrast of color, the bright scent of pine, and the rattling of frozen things clanking together, the impossible brightness of the sunlight reflected. I feel alive when I’m out there. My heart hums to this landscape and I spin and let the snowflakes fall, cold kisses on my unturned face.

No matter the hardships—this year there were plenty—no matter the early terror of driving or the lingering environmental burden brought on by this weather, I have found, as much as I ever did before, that I completely love the snow.

Today, with the pitter-pattering of rain, that early herald of Spring, the snow I love, that I once prayed and longed for, washes all away.

That is way of the seasons: nothing remains forever, no matter how much we may love it, everything goes when it’s time.

Today, the Sun Hangs Bright in the Sky

2010-01-20T15:04:00.010-05:00

Today,
the sun hangs bright in the sky
and sets the asphalt to gleaming
it turns dead grass
in the meadows
to gold
and casts celtic shadows
through skeleton trees
onto the world below

This week:

a close family friend
lost his father
to the metal wheels of a train

another friend passed
after withering quietly
for almost a year

a co-worker's mother
left this world
abruptly on Saturday

Today,
death drifts around me
I face
the inevitable realization:
Life Is Terminal

There is no guarantee
for any of us
that we shall have a tomorrow

But

Today
the sun hangs bright in the sky
and sets the asphalt to gleaming
it turns dead grass
in the meadows
to gold
and casts celtic shadows
through skeleton trees
onto this world below

Why it is Sometimes Wise to Acquire a Rottweiler

2010-01-11T16:50:00.006-05:00

Walk in the Cold of Winter

2010-01-11T12:46:00.006-05:00

Thirty-two degrees
with the temp softly falling
I step out my door
into the cold of winter dusk.

Snow lay in a thinning blanket
over the hills
the smell of it sharp and fresh.
Dark trees stand,
silent sentinels
against a purple-gray sky.

So cold, it makes my nose hairs shiver.

My legs are restless,
the blood in my veins
hungry
for that rapid pulsing rush
of rhythmic movement.

Not merely inclination
but a passionate longing
to dance, to hike, to run,
to hear my loud heart drumming
to feel my breath in ragged gasps

In effort
I find balance
of body and mind
in tandem
they keep me sane.

Or saner
How sane can it be
to walk in temperatures so cold?

Full dark
I round the last bend
early stars
sparkle
bright and brittle
as the scent of snow

Selling Eleven Puppies, One Puppy At A Time

2009-12-08T15:31:00.005-05:00

Grateful

2009-11-25T22:17:00.002-05:00

It's easy to be grateful this year, even for the simple things like being able to inhale an easy breath. Nothing quite like asthma to give you a healthy appreciation of the inhalation. Last night, in the pleasant cool of the November evening, I felt how good the air was in my lungs, how cool and clean. I felt how easy it was to draw breath and I could detect each scent all tangled up within the air; wood smoke, and the rich, slightly acrid scent of dead leaves, faint pine, and trailings of the dinner I had fed to the puppies earlier. I inhaled DEEPLY and pulled all that darkness and starlight, leaves and wood smoke into my lungs. It's a simple joy, breathing--one too often overlooked.

I have more complicated things to be grateful for. I am happy my husband and children are alive and well. Some of us might not have been after the accident last year. It still gives me joy just to look at them and every action I have taken throughout this year was colored by the uncertainty of life. We never know when our moment will come due. This is why today is so important.

I am grateful for my writer-friends, who gave me a piece of myself I had overlooked--one of the best parts of me as it turns out. I spent months, cocooned in a lovely cabin and then packed my things and branched out on my own, setting out to see if that high mountain pass is, indeed, traversable. I'll be back, though, so keep the coffee hot for me. I wouldn't mind a scone, while we're at it.

I am grateful for my health--which started out bad this year and went down hill! I was diagnosed with hideous allergies, then undiagnosed--sort of. I don't feel much differently than I used to--less itchy, I guess, thanks to the antihistamines, but the doctors still don't really know what's go awry in my system. I don't care to dwell on it anymore, I am alive and well (mostly) today--what else matters?

I am grateful for my extended family members--of which there are many--my close community and my extended community that I am coming to cherish more and more each day. I am even grateful for my job. I guess anyone employed would say this at the moment, but even without the recession-induced threat of termination lurking in the back of any mind--I would still be grateful to work where I do with the people who are like a new family to me now.

Life is not perfect. It never is. It is wild and changing, full of heartbreak, joy, passion, and love. At least my life has always been. A crazy ride, being me. But I like it and so it is easy to be grateful tonight.

Happy Thanksgiving. I wish you love and passion, gratitude, joy and peace.
<3 and Blessings,
La

Madness

2009-11-20T16:04:00.002-05:00

when the madness passes
I'm left with the rubble
of broken pots
shattered pictures
torn clothing

dazed, I wander
picking up pieces and
setting the furniture to rights

all the windows are cracked
in the wake of the storm
even the most precious artifacts
sit, knitted together

it takes such effort
in the quiet calm of a reclaimed mind
to put it all back together
I wonder
how many storms my house can take

before

it cannot
be made
whole again

I Love the Rain

2009-11-19T12:55:00.002-05:00

Which is not a popular viewpoint.

Most people like bright, sunny, blue skies with only the occasional cloud floating overhead like a lost sheep. I like low, lowering skies, full of electrical currents and the threat of a sure drenching. I like all kinds of rain, the heavy summer downpours, the fine fall misting, the steady drizzle of a spring shower. I like to be out in it whenever I can. Nothing is finer than to walk through the woods listening to the sound of rain pattering and dropping through the leaves, or to stand on a hillside and turn my face up to the stinging cold droplets, or to lie cozed up in bed, drifting to the sound of it drumming on the roof.

I wonder if perhpas my love of rain came from my early years living in a dry, hard--baked climate. The Colorado dust would coat you over during the course of the day so your skin felt tight and drawn. Any rain we got then was a minimal, stingy sort. Just enough to make the scent of the dirt rise into the air, but not enough to quench any kind of rain-longing. Late in the evenings on the Ranch where we lived, Mom would send us straight into the shower when we finally came inside. Under that warm downpour I watched the water pooling at my feet turn a pale brown as the dust from the day was washed away. I loved feeling the water run over me, loved how it made a thrumming sound in my head.

I wonder if that's the origin for my rain-lust; a combo of dry climate and warm showers at the end of the day.

Wherever it arose, however it came to be, rain-love is always with me now and anytime the weather turns to storming I can feel a restless longing because I want to be out in the rain.

The Lake

2009-11-17T17:51:00.002-05:00

The Lake

I stand with a vast lake behind me, my feet at the shore, facing away into the dawn. It is wide and deep, with a surface smooth as glass. The light falls just so, you can't see into the depths but you know the vast waters are waiting. Sunlight slicks the surface and casts the world back into itself.

There are things dwelling in the depths; sometimes the surface rolls as a heavy mass moves beneath it and ripples reach far and wide.

This lake also holds knowledge and tells me much about myself, about the ones around me, about this world in which I live. I do swim in this lake, immersing myself completely in the cold, cold water, loosing sight and sound as I sink into myself.

When I emerge, it is as if every pore, every tender nerve point on my skin, is vibrantly alive, pulsing. I bring with me the sheen of dark waters, dripping from my skin.

I stand to face a new day, more alive.

But I know, there are demons in the depths. They can wrap their tentacles around me. If I am not careful, I could never reemerge.

Yesterday, I Wanted Not to be Me

2009-11-16T16:26:00.003-05:00

Yesterday, I wanted not to be myself, I wanted to escape from me for the afternoon or even just a few hours. The intensity of me was too great, the weird, oddness of who I am too convoluted. I couldn't make it out and was left with the bright burning of what I feel and nothing else. I wanted to escape, step out of my own experience of being me.

I often feel as if I am standing at the edge of a fire, a deep red-gold burning within me. I press myself closer and closer to the flame to see how long I can stand the heat before it starts to burn. It is a strange kind of game, to see how far into that brightness I will allow myself to fall.

I know I am not alone in my way. All over the world and throughout the history of humankind, there has been this cusp group of people like me: writers, musicians, actors, dancers, painters, composers. We have always existed on the outskirts, the ones for whom a 'normal' life is an intolerable one. The sports stars, the inventors, the religious zealots and the explorers who wander the globe, even those bizarre men who fish the bearing sea, we are the ones who left the crowd, broke away from the social norm, went our own way for no other reason than that we feel this hungry longing. At times, on the edge of the fire-pit, I wish I could lose myself completely, be burned to ash so only the cinders remain. I imagine then, I would have peace.

Instead, I stand with a great black lake behind me, that whispers things I could never know, and the bright, bright burning within. Poised between two poles, I navigate each moment, never knowing will it be the bright burning, or the deep of the lake that will eventually consume me.

Me and 54, 999 other peeps

2009-10-14T22:23:00.000-04:00

U2 have long been one of my favorite bands, belonging in that treasured top-ten who have a song for my every mood. Mostly, I like to play them as loud as I can, so when I sing till my throat aches no one can hear how off-key I am. I have cried to U2 songs, felt my heart crack down the middle and dump tears out like a late summer rain. I have danced till I was dizzy, "It's all right, it's all right, it's all right, she moves in mysterious ways." Before I knew U2 was anything more than an Irish band I was destined to love, I was already loving their music completely. When I heard they were coming to a Stadium near me, of course I wanted to go.

These days, times are hard and tickets aren't cheap. This is where the i-pods come in. Last June I finally joined the ranks of the technologically blessed and got myself an i-pod. My kids had had theirs for years, which is one reason I didn't have mine. I kept buying them, but somehow I never got to keep one for myself. Last June, I finally did. Sleek and slim, it's bright orange so no one can mistake Mom's i-pod for their own. We have one desk-top in the living room dedicated to our i-tunes. It knows who you are when you link-up and brings you your music. We all put our music onto this one machine and, occasionally, we share. For me, this means I have techno and William Control interspersed between the Chieftains, UB40, Sade, and, of course U2. For my girls, this has meant that I wasn't the only one who became smitten with the energetic Irish band. Unbeknownst to me, they downloaded my music and next thing you know, we were all Bono-crazy. When they heard U2 were heading our way, they scraped together their pocket money and bamboozled their father into buying four tickets. We were going to the concert!!!!!

That Thursday dawned bright and clear--I think. I was actually too excited about the evening to even notice the day. I worked at a frantic pace, planning to get out of there early, snatch up the girls from school, rush home, get changed, and rush back to Charlottesville, VA--almost one hour away. I wasn't the only one heading to the concert and I caught snatches of my favorite songs drifting from neighboring offices all day. I left work mere minutes behind schedule. I got home in record time. The girls and I had 15 minutes to shed our ordinary human clothes and turn into beautiful, concert-going divas.

In deciding what to put on, we had a few tricky moments. The best-looking garb is not always the best thing to actually wear. Short skirts can literally freeze your tail off in a brisk wind and heals can become objects of torture by the end of five hours. Going to a concert and screaming and cheering and dancing like crazy is fun. Going to a concert to be cold and in pain is not. In the end, we all wore walking shoes, jeans, and nicely tailored tops. We carried jackets and our bags with refresher make-up and left the real exotica to our choice of eye liner and shadow. We got out of the house in a record 25 minutes.

Charlottesville is a lovely, winding 55 minutes drive from our house. It was a bright, lazy afternoon. I remember that because we were listening to "Beautiful Day" on the way in and I thought, "How perfect." We got to interstate with no trouble, then funneled along with perhaps two thousand other people into the single exit lane and were bumper to bumper for thirty minutes. From living in the country, my girls idea of a traffic jam is three cars lined up at a stop-sign, so this was a big deal. They had all kinds of bad ideas, such as running down the highway beside the truck or climbing into the bed and dancing. Their worst idea was to ram into the back-side of that flashy Beamer who opted to cut in front of us coming into the turn. We did none of these. Instead, they re-applied lipstick and eyeliner and chatted about what kind of damage our F350 Diesel extended cab could do to that Beamer. I confess, I might have participated just a tiny bit in that last discussion.

Eventually, we passed the TV crews coming on live to show the traffic back-up. We leaned out the windows and screamed like idiots. We hopeed they got us on camera.
My son called;
Son: "Mom, have you seen the traffic? There are supposed to be 55,000 people there tonight."
Me: "Yes, I see it, we're stuck right in it."
Girls (shouting in background): "Did you see us on TV?"
Son: "I think you're nuts for going."
Me: "No way! I love U2"
Son: "He he"
Me: "Hey, you're supposed to say, 'I love you, too, Mom.'"
Son: "You did not just say that."

After that, the traffic cleared and we were on our way. We found my husband at the car-wash he's building. He moved the orange traffic cones and we backed into this private, no-pay parking lot. We were so pleased with ourselves for getting free parking; not so much twenty minutes later when we were still hiking though the picturesque residential area on our way to Scott Stadium. At this point, we girls were truly grateful for easy walking shoes.

Concert-going Tip # 1 : Even if your kids are vegan, do not try to bring food into the Stadium, they will make you throw it out. Unless the one checking your bag happens to be a man, and he, apparently, likes your eye make-up, then you will be allowed to bring in a big bar of chocolate, some lollipops, two kinds of breath mints, half a fruit leather, and chewing gum. My girls wondered how I did it. If I had a clue, I would tell them.

Concert going Tip # 2: If you can, get them to book three of your seats inside a concrete block. We spent ten minutes with the help of two ushers looking for seats PP 9, 10, 11, and 12. We did find 12, but the other three disappeared into solid concrete. We were pretty sure no one could sit inside a concrete block and the ushers did, eventually, agree with us. We traipsed half-way around the Stadium. Beside me, my middle daughter was sputtering under her breath, fuming,

"If our new seats aren't better, I'm going to go off!" she said.

She is her father's daughter; I fear for the person standing at the receiving end of her eventual ire. My eldest daughter and I followed in the wake of the fuming two, feeling completely assured that something eventful was likely to happen. We came to a window where a woman was waiting. I'm sure this woman was hired simply for her peaceful, easy expression and her uncharacteristic beauty. It's hard to be properly irate when someone looks like that. We needn't have worried. She reassigned our seats.

"Are they better?" my husband asked.
"Oh, yes," she smiled, a bright sun breaking through clouds, " they are much better."

We sat three rows from the edge of the stadium wall, close enough that Bono and the rest of the band looked like actual people, instead of dancing, singing miniatures of the real thing. Better seats, for sure.

Concert going Tip # 3: The people in front of you can hear every single word of your conversation, so it might not be the best place in the world to tell a graffic story of your vasectomy gone wrong. Whoever you were, I, too, am glad you made it out of there intact.

Sitting three seats from the edge, we were still not in the best seats in the house. The stage wrapped around all sides and the performers did walk down to our end a few times during the course of the show. It didn't matter. It was loud, and they were LIVE! I jumped, I danced, I screamed with my girls. I felt the drum-beat echoing in the hollow of my chest, that airy cavity made by my lungs. I felt the cells in my bones bend to the music, my heart lilt with the beat. Around me, 54, 999 other people were feeling the same.

With a twenty-minute walk ahead of us, we left before the encore. We stood up to go, the crowd surged to their feet and lit up like the Vermont night sky in the blues, reds, and yellows of a perfect miniature milky-way made by their cell-phones. My comrades stayed behind and heard the last beat of the drum, the fading ring of the guitar. I drove home through a long and rolling night, perfectly content.

"It's all right, its all right, it's all right, she moves in mysterious ways...."

The Hummingbird Review!

2009-09-17T07:25:00.000-04:00

Remember a while back, I mentioned this great writer's group I am lucky enough to be part of? We've put together an e-zine: The Hummingbird Review.

Come by and check us out. My section is called Home Fires and I would love to hear what you think about our venture.

http://www.thehummingbirdreview.com/

Peace and Blessings,
La

The Beauty of My Tomatoes

2009-08-28T12:20:00.000-04:00

Last year, my garden died. This sad demise came from a combination of sparse rainfall resulting in near drought conditions and a busy life that gave me no time for weeding or watering. I didn't get a single thing from my early spring planting, a situation I was determined not to repeat this year. My favorites plants to grow and the things I just can't live without are tomatoes and basil. Utilizing reason, I decided to hedge my bets and plant even more of these than I had last year—thinking this way I could manage to keep one or two alive.

We had a banner rain year.

We had uncommonly cool, often overcast conditions.

I'm sure all that organic compost also had an effect.

We grew a tomato hedge. It is 20 feet long, nearly five feet tall and practically throws tomatoes at you when you walk by. We have been eating buckets of tomatoes for six weeks, now, and there is no sign of slow-down in tomato growth on the vines. We’ve had fresh salsa, fresh pasta sauce, tomato and bean salad, we have roasted them, braised them and finally—when I realize we were never going to be able to eat them—I blanched and froze them. The lower foliage of this hedge is made up of my sixteen basil plants. Recently, I picked and processed an entire trash-bag full of basil! In addition to the many bags of frozen tomatoes that will lend themselves to sauces, soups, and pots of chili, we will be eating pesto all winter long!

I never expected such an explosion. It has occasionally been alarming to watch this hedge grow. But picking them and popping them into my mouth fresh off the vine is one of my favorite summer pleasures. In honor of my tomatoes, I wrote the following poem. I hope you enjoy this journey into my garden life and kitchen. I would love to hear about yours.

The Beauty of My Tomatoes

I wish I could describe the beauty
of my tomatoes
adequately
so you could see them
sitting

In the bamboo steaming basket
above
my black granite counter-top

Oblong and bright red or
pale orange with streaks of green or
yellow ones
perfectly round and tiny as a dime

Light from the window
falls over them
brushes their skins
with gold

Were I a photographer
I would not have to
struggle
to explain

That these are not my big tomatoes
those beef-steaks sit
in round legions
like bright buns rising
on a lime-green dish towel

These are my other tomatoes
my cherrys and romas
tumbled together
in the straw-colored basket

I pick one to eat
the still-life altered
by my desire
for sweetness and
the taste the summer on my tongue

They are humble in size
but not in brilliance
they sit boldly in the fading light
urging me to eat

I wish I could bring
you
here

Into this moment

Where a tomato bursts
ripe and fresh
between my teeth

So you could see
with your two eyes
and taste
with your own lips
the beauty of my tomatoes

HOT Virginia

2009-08-19T12:09:00.000-04:00

Virginia in August is like stepping into a steam room. With 95% humidity or above being common and a blazing sun shining regularly, the water molecules themselves heat up. They cling, a slick coating over your skin. Sweat drips from your body if you spend even a few minutes out of doors—say—in walking to your car.

My way of surviving such heat is to minimize all time spent outside. Of necessity, I walk from my air-conditioned house to my air-conditioned car, then from my air-conditioned car to my air-conditioned office. This would be a perfect system if my office wouldn’t keep changing temperatures.

I work in a rambling building that had rooms added out of necessity as the family-owned company grew through generations. Thinking more of useable space, and less of aesthetics or climate control, additions were tacked-on as needed. The problem with tacking things on is you end up with some interesting heat/cooling situations. For instance, I share a thermostat with my boss’s office which is located directly over-head.

He and I both have rooms with a lovely window view overlooking the south side of the building. I look out over the trash cans, he looks out onto the roof of the Annex, but they do let in that well-loved natural light and, by consequence, the broiling summer heat.

It is a well-known scientific fact that heat accumulates in higher elevations. When my boss’s office gets unbearably hot, he comes downstairs to where the thermostat is located and adjusts the air. He doesn’t do this often, just when things get overly toasty in the rooms above. The problem is, in order for it to be bearable upstairs, it has to be near artic conditions down here, effectively freezing the basement dwellers. The only way to balance it out is to open the back door and let all that natural heat wash in.

All in all, this wouldn’t be a bad system except for two things. First, due to the private nature of what I do, I often have my office door shut. This keeps private conversations private, but also allows for window-heated air to accumulate in my room. To solve this problem, I occasionally open the door and skim some cool air from the hallway or the office next door. This leads to the second problem. If my office is hot from the south-heating sun, you can bet the upstairs office is hotter. By the time I open my door, the whole cycle has started and finished; the boss has become too hot, the thermostat has been lowered, my co-workers teeth have started chattering and they have thrown open the back door. When I finally get around to opening my door, hoping for relief from my baking office, the sweltering, clinging, moisture-thick outside heat comes pouring in!

It makes me wonder, why, exactly do I live in Virginia?

Bats, bats, and more bats

2009-07-24T14:34:00.000-04:00

These days I always check my office first thing for bats. There was the one on Monday hanging over my door jamb. Sound asleep and tiny as a field mouse, he was sleeping off whatever fun he'd had the night before. On Tuesday there was one in the hall, nestled in a corner of the slate, nose to the crack. I would guess, like some of the humans in this building, he was pretending he wasn't there. On Wednesday, I was bat-free, but there were three in the office down the hall and on Thursday, I spun in my chair and almost stepped on the fallen rodent, who was looking at me with baleful, sleepy eyes—like tiny black beads—as if I was at fault for disturbing his sleep.

Our Purchaser called the exterminator, who came out to investigate the problem. They poked about in rafters and ceilings and discovered there is an inch of guano (odorous bat-poo) adding extra insulation to our ceiling. Based on this, it was decided we have a bat-infestation.

You can’t kill bats in Virginia, they are a protected form of wildlife. I personally have nothing against them. They eat mosquitoes and other nasty flying bugs, of which we are abundant, and dart and dive through the dusk-hued sky. I love to watch them as they send out their radar beams and pick up the trail of bugs through sound. Their flight is so erratic, you’re often sure they are going to fly right into your face, but they swoop off at the last moment, lifting the hair from your brow with the wind of their wings.

On Friday I got the best bat yet. He was nestled in my coffee-cup, little fingers latched onto the edge. I wondered if he was trying to wrest one more flight from the evening by sucking up the last drips from my mug. All in all, he was the easiest to take outside. I placed a request for employment verification over the top, pressed gently with my hand, and carried him out the door.

I always wish them well as they look groggily up at me when I tip them into the bushes. Their six-inch wing-span has a fine-meshed, lacy pattern. They hobble and hop away, screeching quietly. I can tell from their complaints they don’t like me very much.

Toward the end of the week, our expert had hatched a plan. As it would happen, we’re in the middle of breeding season. Those bats in my office, including the coffee-drinker, weren’t boy bats at all. They were the female bats, apparently worn out from breeding, they were too tired to search for a proper place to sleep. During this most exciting time of the year, they get a little nutty. They squeeze into our halls at night through an opening as small as a ¾ inch gap and have free-breeding parties. The Purchaser is not amused. He is the one the local sheriff’s office calls when the breeding-bats set off the alarm system. He's shown up dozens of times, riffle and flash-light in hand but, the bats? They’re not impressed.

We can do nothing until the season is over. With breeding comes babies which are now inhabiting our attic in tiny, squeaking droves. Our eventual solution will be to clean out the guano and board up all the holes to keep all future bats from nesting in our building. We can’t do that until the young ones have grown and gone. For the time-being all we are left with is coming in each morning knowing for certain there will be bats both above and below.

(Author's Note: My Lady bat in the coffee cup was imaginary, coming from the rafters of my brain as opposed to my office. The dirty coffee cup, however, is oh-so-real.)

Stonehenge

2009-07-16T13:33:00.000-04:00

Stonehenge

I think it’s in the way the light falls, angling through the trees, hitting everything with a bright touch that is so alluring. Approaching Stonehenge, we traverse rolling plains. This morning gentle wind whips the summer wheat, and flips the leaves over. They look like schools of silver fish swimming in a blue sky. I have always wanted to see Stonehenge. With hippies for parents, I’ve know about this rocky formation for as far back as I can recall. What fascinates me and drives me most crazy is that no one knows for certain what it is, how it got here, and what the original purpose was behind its being constructed. The stones have remained, worn down by wind and rain, but the burning urges of the humans who created it have been entirely lost to the years that have passed. We’re left with only speculation; all that amounts to is scientific rumor.

Like all of England, the sky in the south is low and changing. Clouds roll over in fluffy groups, looking lofty from this vantage point, but I dropped down through them on the way back to earth and could see from the plane window how very close to the ground they were. They’re temperamental things, these clouds of England. A whole day of them may pass without even a single drop of rain. Alternately, it could be bright and blue and the clouds as white and airy as cotton wool and next thing you know, it’s a downpour.

We get hot coffee in the refreshment stand just outside the gates. It’s a funny thing about the British, you can find a pub, or six, in every small town, but coffee shops are reserved for shopping malls, airports, and, happily, busy places of interest. They also sell ‘rock’ scones, cucumber sandwiches, and brie, basil and tomato subs. We’re not hungry. We had cider and oatcakes at the campsite this morning.

We’ve arrived early so we sip our drinks and wait for the gates to open. Six little birds flit about the fence posts reminding us of our children. We try to catch a picture of them, but two fly off. “That’s about right,” I say. One of ours has flow the coop already, and the next in line will as soon as he can get his wings under him. Back at home baby birds had just hatched in a nest just over porch light. Just before we left they were so big, they looked stuffed into that small, grassy cradle. “That’s how I feel.” Our nineteen year old commented.

Aside from the birds, there are large groups of people arriving by the bus-load. We sit and, without seeming to stare, try to guess nationalities. There is an entire cricket team, looking smart in their neat shorts and cardigans. There is nothing more British to me than the wearing of shorts with a cardigan. Another group hosts a tightly angled accent. Is it highlands Scottish? Irish? There is one young man wearing a black T-shirt with a skull and silver chains on it. He’s friendly despite this garb, and is the only one in the group who smiles at me. I know, were my girls with me, this would be the one they would remember. While I’m off to get another coffee, they all get up and leave and Neil realizes there are not, in fact, English speaking at all.

With the caffeine coursing, we walk through a short tunnel and come to Stonehenge. Due to literally thousands of years of human occupation, there are numerous places in England that are just as interesting, old, and historically significant as Stonehenge. I have visited cathedrals where they’ve been saying Mass since the eleventh century. I’ve been to Lindisfarne, that water-ringed Island where Christianity first landed in these parts. England, and I suppose all of Europe, is rife with historical sites and ancient structures. Even with all of that, there was something mystical about this monolithic, geometrical stone ring. With the plains rolling away in every direction, it sits all on its own as the center of this small world. At intervals the stones line up. On the solstice, the sun rises and sets through these gaps. I can hardly think that was accidental. I stand in the exact spot and look through the gap in the stones. I can feel the weight of the millions of eyes that have gazed just so before me. Like the ping of a tuning fork, I recognize the magic that is at play.

Exactly half-way around the structure, we feel the first few rain drops. Absorbed in the ear piece, detailing the imagined history of this place, I hadn’t noticed the sky had darkened and the wind had picked up. Within seconds, it’s pouring. Neil gallantly gives me his rain-jacket. He’s wearing a polar-fleece, I’m wearing cotton. We’re camping tonight so with no way to get things dry after this, he deems I will have the worst of this after the rainfall. We try to stick it out, to continue to stand on the open plain and marvel at the monolith. The rain wins out. By the time we reach the tunnel, my pants and shoes are soaked, I drip and my feet squelch on the stone walkway. We stop in at the gift-shop to pick up presents for the kids.

When we exit fifteen minutes later, the sky is again a bright blue.

Getting the Hay In (written May 20th)

2009-06-03T16:37:00.000-04:00

It's that bright kind of sunny day where you squint even in the shade and the entire country-side looks dipped in light. The blue sky harbors lazy white clouds and the bushy green trees harbor warbling birds. They never give me any advance warning, but there's something in the air on a hay-day (maybe that fresh-cut hay smell) that let's me know haying is just a phone-call away.

This time we're shooting to get 150 bales to feed our livestock of two: one fat young painted Saddlebred, and one bony old Thoroughbred. Mostly, they're pasture-pals, friends I can go to whenever I need a listening ear. I can depend on them to stand quietly while I complain and never argue or tell me the situation is my own fault. They're just there, quietly crunching, swishing tails at the flies while the warmth of their hides permeates the air. I can lean back against that solid, living mass, and let all my problems slide away.

I can't haul hay, anymore. After years of gloving up and tossing 60 pound bales onto trucks--as quick and tough as any of the men--now, my allergies won't let me. I always did come away from a haying session pocked-marked with raised red welts on my arms, and a voice grown hoarse and (I thought) sexy from coughing. Really, it was hives from my allergic reaction to those lovely Northern Grasses. I can't haul it, but I can still drive and fortunately for me, I managed to birth a strong, healthy, wonderfully helpful young man who came with me to hay today.

We drove to the field on dry, dusty roads, past where they were laying another field down. That deep green blanket would fade in the sun and be ready to tedder tomorrow, ready to bale the next day. Farther on, we wove past cows, stomping lazily in a lean-to, up over a knoll to where the hay field stretched out. Long rows were piled neat and the baler was churning away, rumbling and plunking as square bales popped out the back. They had three lines baled already, about fifty ready to haul. But, this was my son's first go at driving a hay-laden truck; I wasn't willing to push it. We'd load thirty-five bales, forty tops.

I drove down the lanes, he ran along beside me, as graceful as a gazelle, despite the fifteen pounds of muscle he has recently packed on through his weight-training sessions—pounds he'd be thanking God he'd worked hard to earn by the end of today. He loped along bare-foot because he'd been wearing sandals when we'd gotten the call. He had gloves in his truck, so at least his hands were safe. His feet, it seemed, would have to fend for themselves. He was faster than I had ever been and moved in smooth motion. He caught each bale, lifted it as I chugged slowly up in my diesel F350. Then, in one easy movement I could never have mastered, he tossed them into the truck bed. In moments like these you realize you have been kidding yourself; I never could load hay like any man, that was a dream born from a wanna-be.

I find I'm still a wanna-be. Only the strong memory of struggling for each asthmatic breath keeps me locked in the cab with the air-conditioner blowing. It's hard to give up something you love so that you can stay alive and breathing. But, even without the exhausted, itching, back-rending, muscle defeating, exhilarating effort of actually loading the hay--I still love it.

He looks hot as he pulls off his T-shirt, climbs into the driver's side of my truck, pops in his ears buds, cranks his i-pod, and drives my away. He'll be back in an hour or two, after he's unloaded into the barn and I'll head back out to the field as a driver, a blessed break from the office-job where I'll be working late, waiting in comfort for him to deliver each load to home. We'll do this four times, and by the end of the night, he'll be worn to the bone, sweating and itching, and too tired to lift his fork to eat and I'll envy him for his youth, his strength, his health that all give him this ability to load the hay.

More than that, I'll be grateful. I'll remember this day forever as I know he will. He'll remember it as the time he loaded one hundred and sixty-two bales of hay from the truck to the barn all on his own. I'll remember it as the first time ever I didn't lift a single bale while getting the hay in.

Who is that Girl, Again?

2009-05-12T13:51:00.000-04:00

It's funny how life likes to throw a curve ball, just to make sure you're still paying attention in the game. This winter has been one of many challenges, beginning with hitting that tree in December and then just rolling from there. Whole weeks went by where I lived moment to moment because, quite frankly, I wasn't sure if I would be easy breathing in the next. Asthma has a sneaky way of making a person come completely into the present. I stopped thinking ahead, stopped planning. I tagged the line, "...if I can breathe" to the end of every sentence, "Yes, we can go shopping on Sunday, if I can breathe."

It came on me suddenly, even though the propensity had apparently always been there, lurking, for years. Asthma and Allergies, completely new, utterly unwelcome ways in which to define myself.

The trouble is, I do sit well with definitions I don't like. If I have Allergies and am as highly allergenic as they say, my whole life could be cast in shadow: no more long walks through rippling fields, no more laying in the grass chewing on the long end of a stem, no more romping with the dogs, hauling hay for the horses, no more running over wooded paths unless the mold count is down. Stretched out before me, my new life looked like a desert, vast and wide and utterly empty of all the things green and beautiful, things I truly loved.

Indeed, it didn't sit well. I had to ask, if not that wild nature girl, then who am I? If I can't do those things I love, what can I do?

I looked deep into the darkest corner of my soul and found me sitting there, just as calm and peaceful as you please, sitting still and quiet in that close, cool darkness, all soaked up with the essence of me. That was when I knew, I can never be other than what I am. I've lived for forty years with all these things they now call Allergies and Asthma. Yes, I have had moments of highly atypical skin conditions, random joint swelling, abdominal irritability, headaches, pain, general irritability, and exhaustion. When the doctor asked my symptoms and I told him, he wondered why I hadn't mentioned them to other doctors before. I had but they couldn't find what was wrong with me and anyway, over time, "sick" became my normal.

Now, I have gone full circle, through normalcy, into pain, illness, diagnosis, treatment, recovery, and now back to what I know as normal. I have a lot of allergies, according to my very reliable forearms. I could take that information and no one would blame me if I opted out off the natural world and chose instead to lock myself away in a plastic bubble. I might attain something like wellness if I did that, but what kind of a well would it be? Would I be happy? Would I have a life I actually wanted to live? Would I have love?

A recent study has proven vitamin D is highly effective in mitigating asthma and allergy symptoms. So effective, in fact, they are now recommending we allergenics not stay inside, theoretically safe in our plastic houses, but that we get outside, strip down as much as we dare, and let that hot sun soak into all the surfaces of our skin. When you haven't been out in a while, the sun is like warm honey pouring over you. It is sensuously wonderful; it feels so good. And the soft murmuring of the leaves sounds like an endearment, as if they are rustling just for you.

I sat on my deck, having gotten the unofficial go-ahead to get out there and soak up some D and just looked at my natural world, the squirrels chasing each other irately through the branches, the butterflies drifting wonkily around the lilacs, those bright green leaves, bending and tipping waving at me in the breeze. I fell in love, in that punch-drunk kind of way that hits you sometimes. I could feel that thick, warm emotion coursing through me. All my aching muscles and even the blood in my veins relaxed. I settled deeper in my chair, and fell back in to wonder.

As every asthmatic will likely tell you, things trigger an attack. Once you learn what your triggers are, you can begin to get a grip on a very uncontrollable, often terrifying situation. One of my triggers is stress, if I get freaked out enough, you can bet I'm going to end of having trouble breathing. This was perfectly apparent during the day we took my daughter in for an emergency appendectomy. That's some stress, I can tell you, having your daughter become violently ill, then rushing her to the hospital--one hour away-- then having her operated on all within an eight hour period. This adventure began at eight in the morning, I stopped breathing normally by about two o'clock.

It makes you wonder, though, if you stop and think about it. If stress can have this great physiological impact, could not the opposite of stress work in reverse? Could sitting still, perfectly relaxed and deeply in love with anything at all make your lungs, as well as your heart, expand? It made me wonder and it made me make some solid decisions.

None of us ever know exactly how long we will have on earth and we are all given the glorious freedom to do what we wish with the time we do have. I could hole myself up in my house, make every person entering wash the pollen and dander and mold spores and dust mites off their bodies before hugging me, and keep my life pritinely sterile.

Or I could live, just as I always have, embracing every part of my world with two arms wide. I could inhale every moment of my life deeply. I could work myself to the bone in my garden and then sit, tipsy-in-love, letting all those good hormones work their magic.

In the end, in the very, very end, I have found, I'm just still me, same as I always was and I will do what comes naturally to me, what lets me remember deep peace and thick love.

I am wishing the same for you.

Peace, Love, and Blessings,

La

Still in Poetry Month-- More Haiku!

2009-04-28T22:23:00.000-04:00

little bird alight
within a gilded cage, will
stay if she can write

This Quiet Coming Home

2009-04-13T21:19:00.000-04:00

my natural mind writes
easy in words
as the seagull is easy
in flight above a gray ocean
as the hawk is easy
in the updraft from the canyon

my body dances
in harmony with each lilting beat
and bottom drum
in unison
feet and heart both pounding
even my spirit is happy

my heart loves
equally enamored
with a passionate embrace
chocolate
low, rolling skies
babies, horses
the eternal light of god

my mind dreams
even while waking
creates other mountain ranges
other waving fields in which to run
other me’s to live this lifetime

I am this body
I am this heart and mind
I am this spirit absolute

this is what it is to be me

when I die, I will never die

my writing mind
will return to the belly
of the thoughts that birthed her
renew
and be born again to write

my dancing body
will lay down in black earth,
dissolve into those elements
that comprised my bone, sinew, muscles, and blood
and become other bodies

my loving heart
will be absorbed
into that greater love

my spirit will go back
to the source it never left
a cup of water
poured into the river
already flowing

I will fall back
into myself
into this quiet
coming home
I call dying

Spring Haiku

2009-04-10T09:59:00.000-04:00

I'm in a writing group with all these amazing, talented writers. It's intimidating. But, as my husband the Soccer Coach would say, "You don't improve your skills on the pitch when you're the best player in the game."

Apparently, in Soccer (and in writing) we learn the most when dumped into a situation where we are surrounded by people strong, faster, more talented, and better at doing whatever it is we love. I think I'm in the right place.

April is National Poetry Month. In honor of this wonderful written expression, me and my fellow group-mates have been writing Haiku, one a day for the entire month. Prior to April 1, I didn't know much about Haiku. I still don't know much, but I'm learning. It's been ten days. Here are a few of my favorite Haiku. They're short and sweet, abbreviated and vast. I love them.

Spring Haiku

#1
pattering rain-drops
staccato out my window
the heart-beat of Spring

#2
lady daffodil
curtsying in the garden
nods me good morning

#3
wind drops from blue sky
skips over the emerald fields
and turns them silver

#4
rain left the world fresh
black earth gives up sunshine scent
from each new flower

#5
impossible light
cascading through my window
lures me to play

#6
low, dark mountains rest
young hills frolic at their feet
learning to be wise

#7
what is that color
blended burgundy and gold
my shade of longing

#8
cherry tree blossoms
a hundred dainty fairies
flashing petticoats

#9
adolescent trees
stretch in sap-filled eagerness
reaching for the light

#10
wistful clouds adrift
pause in the powder blue sky
to watch the horses

We're on the Verge

2009-03-18T15:30:00.001-04:00

We have crocuses
popping their heads up
through the soggy garden soil
those brave, diminutive flowers.

Buds on the trees are swelling
Grass is greening up
We're on the verge
Another couple of weeks
I'll be complaining about the heat

The Sound of Snow

2009-03-04T15:58:00.000-05:00

It snowed seven inches on Sunday night, surprising the heck out of me. We were going to the Zoo on Saturday. I had been watching the Saturday weather like an obsessed hawk all week--scanning the web-casts daily, trying to determine if a Zoo trip would be nuts from a purely weather standpoint.

It was a little. 42 degrees and breezy, it wasn't the best temperatures for gallavanting about, marveling at rare and unusual beasts. But, in my life, I have learned I had better strike while the iron's hot--it cools off way too quickly when one thing, then another, then another comes along.

So, we went. I loved it, walked for miles, ended up foot-sore and bone-chilled by the end of the day. I got to see a shrew--which is the cutest little creature. I cannot understand it--where did the reference to an awful woman come from? Shrews are just as cute as cute can be. Call me a shrew and I'll throw my arms around you and kiss you for the compliment.

We drove home through rain and mixed snow, but it had cleared away by morning and I was looking forward to my day. I had a chocolate cake date with my girlfriend, Grace. She makes a mean chocolate cake.

It was rumor when first I heard of it---"Rumor has it, we're going to get 8-10 inches of snow."

"Suuuurrreee, we are." I knew better than to believe. I had suffered many dissappointments in our sunny, warm VA. Snow in March? Paaalease.

Four o'clock pm it started, large moist flakes, bits of shredded coconut, dropping onto the dark brown earth below, frosting the grass with the first hints of the whipped-cream topping that was to come. Oh, wait, now I've slipped into thinking about the cake, the chocolate one, the one I didn't have because this other white stuff fell thick around, the one Grace and Clarke were forced to eat for me. Thanks for the sacrifice, guys. :>

Are you wondering? Did I go out in my snowfall? Did I do all those things I imagined I would? Not all, life just doesn't work that way. Sometimes, when the moment comes, it is enough to watch your children making snow-angels--in their bathing-suits, I might add.

I did go for my walk, though. Some things I can't resist. I had to hear that sound, be part of the falling silence. I stood in my driveway and looked up, let the flakes fall on my face, magic from the earth and sky consumed me, I closed my eyes and heard that longed-for sound of snow.

Photograph of snow in trees by Sraddha Van Dyke. For one time use for "theviewoverehere," all rights retained by Sraddha Van Dyke.

Spring is Coming

2009-02-19T13:26:00.000-05:00

I saw it this morning in the lean of the sky. That bold sun hid behind white ruffled clouds and shot razor-beams across the pale blue. The trees are whispering to each other, stretching their long-bowed fingers, bud-tipped, making ready to grasp the light of day.

Last night a young black bear loped across the road in front of my red Ford F-350 crew cab pickup (farewell tight-turning Expedition--I drive a monster, now.)

"A bear!" I exclaimed, scaring the living daylights out of my daughter, who tossed her i-pod and clutched at her heart,

" God, mom, are you trying to kill me?"

Of course not, I just wanted her to see the bear.

As if the green haze across the lawn weren't enough, as if that warm wind moving with easy speed through the undergrowth did not tell the tale, certainly that young bear, lean and dark from his winter sleep is clear evidence of the coming Spring.

I never got my great snowfall, but did have one peaceful evening when the world turned white. I cannot say I enjoyed my winter. Though our Christmas was truly lovely, the tree, the asthma, and now the allergies were not.

It makes me wonder, though, what will my Spring be like? This year I know what the blowing pollen will do. All those years and all that illness, I never knew.

I am allergic.

Does it really matter what to? To the natural world, to trees and grass, to weeds, to microscopic mold spores that dwell on underbellies, that thrive in the dampness of my southern climate, to dust, to all sorts of things.

My body is a riot of objection, it thinks near everything is an invader, it marshalls the troops, hauls out the guns, vows to win the war! My nose twitches, my eyes water, my skin gets creepy crawly, my knees swell, my stomach aches.

As the fighting continues, I grow more and more weary until getting out of bed to make coffee seems more effort than I can manage. All because of allergies. At least I have a name for my foe, for that low-lying demon who has haunted me all my life. At least I live in a time and place where we have such things as antihistamines and albuterol. Fexofenadine, my faithful new friend.

I am always pensive in February, peering out from the shadows of the cold, dark nights and the heaviness of the flu season. As the sun stretches itself across the sky, holding on to two more minutes each day and the inevitable Spring crawls close, I wonder, I really do; What will this Spring be like?

It is SNOWING!!!!

2009-02-02T22:40:00.000-05:00

Today, in balmy VA, I drove with my windows rolled down. 57 degrees, the sun was shining and all the world was whispering Spring. Late in the day, with dark clouds, wind, and thunder a brimming cold front made the temperature plummet.

Still, who has time to think of snow?

We had a lot of homework to be done, stories to read, dinner to be made. Each task completed, I thought, "Thank Goodness, one step closer to the warmth of my bed." As the night worn on, my toes grew cold without their brightly colored socks. The kids drifted off, one by one. The house grew still and quiet. Downstairs I padded, turning off lights.

And then I saw it, a thin blanket of white on my yard. Snow. I peeked out the door, it was still falling, a soft tinkling whisper in the night. On my outstretched palm it fell like feathers of ice. One child was still wandering our halls,

"Look, it's snowing" I whispered.

"Oh, snap!" She said.

We both know it could be gone by morning, with our Lady Virginia's fickle weather patterns. But, right now, tonight, my world has turned white, and I will sleep like the land under that soft, feather blanket, my mind resting in the quiet joyful knowledge: It is snowing.

Photograph by Sraddha Van Dyke. For one time use for "theviewoverhere" , all rights retained by Sraddha Van Dyke.

I Long for Snow

2009-01-20T10:47:00.000-05:00

It's difficult to breathe, today. The winter cold has got me. Sore throat, watery eyes, sneezing, coughing, aching. I'm starting to sound like that commercial. I feel insulted by this cold, coming so soon after the crash. Hasn't my body been through enough? I could forgive it, I think, if only we had snow.

That's the trouble with living in Virginia, snow is almost mythical. Because it actually does snow once every few years, it makes this myth compelling. If it never snowed, I could give up and forget about pristine walks through the blanketed silence, my over-sized boots making the first prints on the virgin road. When it is that quiet in the world, my mind takes on an easy peace. I walk and watch the snow flakes fall, drifting unhurried through the skeletal branches, falling toward the rest of their mates waiting quietly on this earth; each flake unique when you catch it in your palm, and study it quickly before it melts away.

When I was little I lived in Colorado. Snow was a given there. We got blizzards, where you risked not making it home if you were even a few miles down the road from where you lived. The light was blinding off that white mass of ground, with a barren bowl of blue sky overhead and without the looming trees to block the glare.

In my new native home, the trees huddle under the white coverlet, a sheltered canopy, adding to the hush of winter. I have friends who live in Michigan and Chicago who will say they would happily give me some of their snowfall to spare their backs, bent from shoveling, and their ice-chapped faces, and their bone-cold way of living through the winters of the North.

Still, I long for snow. No matter what they tell me of hardship, and having to wear too many coats and scarfs, hats, boots, and gloves. There is an angel deep inside me, just waiting for her patch of white, and my willingness to lie down on that plain bedding and allow her to be born.

Through all this winter's cold, I long for snow.

Thursday Musing

2009-01-08T15:55:00.000-05:00

Look at me with all those people. How did the wild, lost, woodsy girl turn into her; a mother of six with more tasks to complete in each day than any three women could do?

They're lovely, aren't they? Tall and beautiful, each as full of themselves as I could ever hope for them to be. Talented, more secure in who they are than even I am now, approaching that venerable age of forty.

Do you ever marvel at your life? Sometimes I stand back and cannot see the threads of how I came to be. There are still those lost parts of me, those whispers in the eves, calling me softly to come out into the rain, to shed my scales and raise my dragon head, to breathe my own fierce fire.

It's hard to reconcile, the great gifts I possess and the eternal longing I still feel. I wonder when the world will be made right by my own definition and I will walk tall on the street, and all who pass will know me, simply, as I am.

(Photo by Jyothi Sacket: In the Moment Photography)

I Feel Plain

2008-12-30T18:36:00.000-05:00

I feel plain,
one step closer to stillness
my ever present heart
beats
my breath flows easily
in and out
my back creaks
I know the veil
has thinned

there is no separation
between you and I
if I reach out my shadow hand
and place my warm palm
on your heart
can you feel its weight?

I believe in nearness
in the absence of earthly space
in quantum physics
there is no space between us

our energy flows easily
sliding around each other
where I end
and you begin
means nothing

death steps nearer
brings her weighted boot to bear
and stomps
my heart beats
my breath flows easily in and out
my back creaks

The flimsy ghosts
wrap their arms around me
holding on to life
through the visions of my mind

when time slowed, bent, skidded to a halt
I saw life step nearer
in her weighted boot and stomp
my heart
beats
my breath
flows
my back
creaks

the flimsy ghosts wrap their arms around me
I know the veil has thinned

Bertram Family Christmas Eve

2008-12-27T09:31:00.000-05:00

Bertram Family Christmas Eve

We cook until we can’t stand up, making Lasagna and vegan Lasagna, pumpkin pies and vegan pumpkin pies, relish trays with four kinds of dip, apple crumble, cheese cake, cheese and olive plates, we have five kinds of chips and grape-cranberry juice which has been made festive with the addition of ginger ale. It begins as soon as my feet hit the floor—well, as soon as the caffeine in the tea I drink nowadays hits my feet on the floor. I make a list and tick things off as we go. We listen to Carols, try to come up with interesting things for the anxious little ones to do on this longest day of the year. It seems to drag on forever, as each piping hot dish is brought from the oven and laid on a side-board. The entire house is scrumptious. My girls have finally gotten old enough to help and this year I not only have my culinary-talented and kitchen-enthusiastic future daughter-in-law but also my mother-in-law, a fine cook herself, who is visiting from England. We laugh as we cook and occasionally curse, as when I forget to set the timer and toast the top of two pies, and we utilize all of our joint skills to make another Christmas Eve special.

The kids harass us incessantly about opening an early present. I say no, but we all know I’m lying. We open the kid’s gifts to each other early each year because the future daughter-in-law is in the drawing; she will go to her parent’s house for all of tomorrow. We have to open the kid’s gifts now or we won’t have the chance to share with her in the gift-opening. We all know this, but I like the look of worried suspense on the two little ones faces. They think I’m not being entirely honest, but they're not completely sure. When we finally say, “yes,” there’s cheering.

As night falls in a heavy blanket of black, we lay all the food we’ve cooked out on the table. The lights twinkle on the tree, and the pride and joy of our lives all tromp up the stairs to sit down to feast. It’s a Bertram Family tradition to lay out this meal for the kids and then to let them eat their fill. They laugh and joke, eat, drink, and are merry.

“When are we going to open the presents?” He’s only asked that a hundred times today, “You said after we’re done eating. We’re done eating!” He’s very smart for a seven year old. But before we begin, this inquiring young gentleman has to use the bathroom, which he announces. So as not to be offensive to this mixed-bag of relatives, he spells out that he has to go ‘p..o...o..p.’ We erupt into horrified laughter. Who in this room, where everyone is older than him, did he think he was sparing this news through spelling?

It takes an hour to rip the paper off the presents, and 'ohhh' and 'ahhh 'over their perfection. Everyone is pleased with their gifts: Piranha Panic, A Giant model horse, An i-pod arm band for the runner who won’t be running until her compression fracture is healed, a PS 2 anime game, a dragon kite, a fantasy book series, and a lovely red tea pot with four cups. They all bought gifts for each other with no influence from Mom or Dad. As it goes, they’re good gift-givers.

Winding down towards bedtime, four youngsters vie for room in the bathroom to brush teeth. I know I’ve still got a bit of the night ahead and make another cup of tea. When the children are nestled all snug in their beds, I go down and read “Twas the Night Before Christmas,” which, after 20 years of reading, I know by heart.

“Mom doesn’t even have to look at the pages,” The twelve year old says. She shrugs herself comfortable, and snuggles into bed.

I read the story, easily showing the pictures as I don't have to follow the words. It brings a tingle of joy to my toes and that swelling of warmth in my chest. I kiss each soft head, bless them with good sleep, and pause just a moment longer than maybe I would have in years past, when we hadn’t recently crashed head-on into a tree. I shut the door softly. They all sleep in the same room,

“No none leaves without asking me.” The fifteen year old says. She’s cleverly sleeping in front of the door; they’d have to step on her on their way out.

I’m bone tired as the house finally settles into deep silence. I’m still a long way from done tonight, but this moment, in this year, even with my cramping whip-lashed back, my creaking, unstable spine, I wouldn’t change a thing. Everyone I love most was smiling and happy today. Little spats, a regular feature of such a large family, lacked their usual rancor. There were more hugs, more apologies, more willingness to overlook the imperfections of a sibling, more easiness in forgiving.

Tomorrow will be the whirlwind of presents, and more family and friends, a frantic, joyous busyness from dawn till dusk. I won’t have time to pause and ponder, but this Christmas Eve in the silence of my sleeping house, I know how very certainly I am blessed.

“Merry Christmas to all and to all a good night…”

Peace and Blessings,
La

A Life of Whiplash, written over time 12-07 through 12-29

2008-12-18T15:06:00.000-05:00

Whiplash is not a pleasant injury. Insipid and creeping, it does not show up until the fifth day after impact. The impact itself is bad--I hope never to live through something like that again--although, it does beat the alternative.

In the first few days, I lived in a pleasant state of drug-induced numbness and accident-related shock. As the shock wore off, and I scaled back on the pharmaceuticals, mobility returned and life began to normalize--or so I thought. It was at this moment that whiplash hit. Those supple muscle lying along-side my spine seized up, turning into knotted cement blocks. Trying to move with this new musculature produces a kind of torment. A slight bend sends shocks of pain. These unpleasant nerve-bursts are not limited to where I thought I had been injured in the crash. They are indiscriminate, involving whatever muscles and vertebrae seem to take their fancy.

Ironically, the correction for such an injury is to move, very slowly, very gingerly, and to stop before actual pain. In fact, the orthopaedic pediatric specialist looking at my daughter's x-ray said the best thing for us all would be to do Yoga. Fortunately, I have been practising Yoga since I was six years old, my daughter she since before she was born. In fact, we have all done Yoga throughout our lives. Yoga was how my husband and I first met. Now, how funny, it is to be our cure--once again. We practise within a very narrow margin, cautiously, listening, moving as softly as we may, and the two with the fractured vertebrae are the most subtle practitioners of all.

The bones are healing by now, with three weeks gone, knitting themselves together, solidifying. The ligaments and tendons will take 8 to 12 weeks to grip with any kind of real strength. From now to my Birthday in early March, we will all tread gently, treating our spines with careful respect.

This in not my first healing experience, though it is my first car accident. I have learned healing is something you allow, not something you make happen. With the right food, exercise, sleep, and kindness, our bodies will have the best chances of healing. Though, people tell me we will never be completely healed. A 95% recovery is considered the best we can hope for and, even then, we will live with the evidence of this event in our spines for as long as we are here. I am not worried. What experience have I had that is not still with me lodged somewhere in the bone and blood structures of my physical form? Why would this be any different than a hundred other moments that have made their mark on me? Why would the spine be spared when the psyche is not?

I have also learned that every experience in my life, no matter how seemingly insignificant or insufferably painful, has added to all the rest to make me into who I am. This accident is not special in this way. It brought with it difficult physical pain, but now I have slowed down, and am taking care--I have to in order to survive. It also did not merely lash the spine, and rattle my brain, but it made its mark on my mind. Not with any kind of fan-fairing dramaticism, just a deep, subtle shift, like the sands of the ocean floor drifting from the force of a wave and never going back again. I learned something about the nature of life, how fragile it is, how there are no guarantees, how much useless time I have spent worrying over things that may never occur.

We are all here on borrowed time. Everyone I love, and all of those who love me, we only have each other on loan. How can I worry about what will happen tomorrow, next week, next year? There is no promise that any of that agonized-over future will even exist.

Right now, I kiss my loved ones, I stand with my feet square on the earth and bask in the bright light of the sun, I count the stars that dot the sky, and sit quietly when I can, resting peaceful, because today I am alive.

Alive and Slowly Moving,
La

Things That Go Bump in the Road

2008-12-11T08:49:00.000-05:00

Things That Go Bump in the Road

We were late. All four kids were rushed out of the house by two harried parents and into the Ford Expedition. My husband was driving. Our eighteen year old, a third member of our dance trio, had gone ahead of us in his little Toyota. The other two dancers, our nine year old and I, were dressed in black skirts and stockings, ready to skip to the Irish reel and jig. We had been practicing for 10 weeks and this was to be my daughter’s first performance.

Life does not always go as planned.

Our twelve year old daughter had left her purse at a cousin’s house so we had to make an extra stop on the way to our performance. It had snowed the night before, sugar dusting all of Virginia with less than an inch of fluffy, white powder. By the time we were on the road, just after noon on Sunday, it was nearly forty degrees and a bright, clear sunny day.

No remnants of the first winter snowfall remained on the road as we drove to the top of the hill.

Getting the purse had added pressure. We were only minutes behind schedule, but that was enough for us to be going at a steady clip heading down the long hill. Not speeding—it’s impossible to exceed the limit on those winding roads—but moving along quite nicely in an attempt to make it to the recital on time, just cruising on a Sunday on a road we knew well and had driven over a thousand times in twenty-five years in all kinds of weather.

The eldest had her i-pod on and was reading, settling in for the hour-long drive. The two little ones were laughing and messing around with each other. The middle daughter was sorting through the recently retrieved purse and I was inhaling my salad in the front seat, trying to fuel-up for our dance performance.

Life; busy and hectic as usual. No sense of foreboding, no brilliant flash of insight, my only thought when I saw the ice on the road was for my son, driving ten minutes ahead of us. We were in a four-wheel drive, he was just in that little Toyota.

My husband swore as we hit the front edge of the first ice patch and reached down to make sure we were in all-wheel drive. We were, but it wouldn’t do us any good.

We hit the second patch and he knew we were in trouble. He turned into the skid as we began to slide. I imagine we were going about 40 miles per hour but we hit the ice on a steep down-slope and picked up speed as we careened off the right hand side of the road, dropped into a ditch and headed straight for a set of mail-boxes.

I thought, “We’re going to hit those mailboxes.” And I remember the feeling of horror and dismay, knowing we were going to have an accident and no way to prevent it.

That was the moment everything went hay-wire.

We only clipped the mail boxes. Our trajectory changed. I closed my eyes just before we slammed into the boxes—I’m a horrid chicken at times like this—when I opened them, we were airborne. We had careened at high speed back across the road, hit a culvert, where a pipe went under the driveway, and sailed over the gravel lane. We hit railroad ties lining the drive on the other side and sent one flying thirty-feet into a field. We crashed landed through a fence, plowing straight over a wooden post that bent like a toothpick. It didn’t slow the truck at all. Ahead, in the field, we could see the tree coming. Eyes wide open, this time, I watched as we barreled towards it. There was no way to avoid that tree, no time to think, or even react before we hit. I could see doom looming, and there was nothing I could do to stop it.

The impact came with a force I was not familiar with, not from falling off a dozen different horses. It started in my low back and ricocheted all up my spine. My head flung forward and my chin hit my chest. I know now why they call it whiplash. My husband and daughter in the driver’s side both screamed in pain. We had stopped, but to what? He shouted, “Don’t anybody move! Stay exactly still!” Immediately, I turned to look at the kids, feeling the strange looseness in my neck and back. They were all staring back at me, eyes wide with shock and pain. All of them awake, alive. Two started crying.

I knew we were supposed to stay put, I had had my CPR training, but I looked back to the front and saw the mangled hood of the truck. My husband was shouting for a cell-phone. There were four in the truck, somewhere. I began frantically looking for mine. It had been charging in my cup-holder but I couldn’t find it. I traced the cord and pulled it from the floor, handed it to my husband. I looked back up at the crumpled front end.

“We’re getting out of here.” I said.

I don’t know what makes a vehicle explode, but I was not willing to wait and see if ours would. I got out, moving with difficulty and had the kids get out, looking them over as they left. Our little boy was bleeding on his lips. I took the edge of his shirt to wipe the blood. Slowly, we climbed the hill and the kids sat on the remaining rail-road tie. By then, my husband had stopped someone on the road who actually had a cell-signal—my phone didn’t—and they called the rescue squad. He also called my sister, an RN.

I looked down at my kids, all crying and shivering in the brisk wind. I took off my coat and wrapped it around the nine year old, wrapped my scarf around the twelve year old. My husband came over and looked at me. We knew how lucky we were,

“It’s good they’re all crying.” He said, “It means they’re all alive.”

“My feet are cold.” My littlest one said. I looked down, he was missing a shoe.

“Mine, too.” The nine year old was missing both of hers.

I noticed my feet were also cold, both of my shoes were gone as well. Where were our shoes? I hobbled back down to the car and found them. I didn’t know you could hit something so hard it would knock your shoes off. One of mine was jammed up under the dashboard where the impact had driven part of the engine into the car. It was a while later that I realized my shin was bleeding and I had a bone-bruise as a result of the engine’s movement.

The EMT’s arrived and put collars on the older four of us and hauled us off in two ambulances on back-boards. The littlest two children seemed to have escaped nearly unscathed, and went home with my RN sister, to be checked out later by our Family doctor.

In the end, we have five cases of whiplash with a lot of pain and stiffness during any kind of movement. My husband was the most gravely hurt with a herniated disc in his lower spine as well as a small laceration to his scalp.

This week, for me, has been a dazed blur, partly due to the combination of pain-killers and muscle relaxers they prescribed for me, mainly due to a kind of numb gratitude. I didn’t know I could feel so grateful. I feel as if I am living in a dream-world, or walking on a cloud. Just the sound of their voices and the sight of my husband and children fills me with an intense, stunned love.

I don’t know why we were so lucky, why all of us were spared. It isn’t easy to total an Expedition. The tree was twelve inches in diameter. We hit with such force, we uprooted it, yet, in essence, we all walked away. I know one day, my name will be called and I will leave this earth to join my maker. I know one day, we will all be called. “Why not now?” is a question that has no answer, yet I can’t help asking.

In the end, I suppose, it just wasn’t our time.

(Photo by Nataraja Bertram)

six words, no less, no more

2008-12-03T13:02:00.000-05:00

December 03, 2008

So, I get these writing prompts from mysterious places. The latest one said write about yourself in six words. My first thought was;

Whoooaaaa! I have to be succinct.
Which is six words if counting.

next I wrote about my life
nobody knows their way before starting
Guinness girl loves men and babies
babies made me into my Mom
I live for love and horses
I only swim in freezing waters
I live with crazy inside me
even fire can burn too brightly
shiny candy shell covers inner darkness
born wild, nothing mundane holds me

then I wrote about my heart
true love is only for takers
where love resides, all demons flee
don't look and think you know

then I wrote about my art
writing lust overcomes uncertainty. I unmask.
in words, I find my magic
come to me, I'll write you

then I wrote about my God
faith floods and washes fear away
where none reside, I am complete
all are born, few truly live

Then I wrote my finished novel

Love happened. She turned. Wrong way.

What about you? What words appear?
Can you write you in six?

Birthday Princess

2008-11-26T11:36:00.001-05:00

She had dimples when she was born, after two boys, my very first little girl. I remember the fresh joy of realization. Surprisingly, it was followed immediately by a squeezing of my heart. I knew some of the things this tiny being would go through, the sorrows, agonies, and challenges faced in life on earth as the fairer sex. It surprised me how immediate the kinship was. I did not love her more than my baby boys, I just knew that a woman's heart would be hers one day. A heart that would break and, even in that pain, expand forever to encompass more in love.

Now, she's a young woman, lovely to behold. She is beautiful, strong, funny, and artistic. She walks to her own, unique music, a bundle of contradictions. At times I look at the children we have and wonder at the experimentalism of genetic mixing. How can she be both soft and loving, deeply caring, and yet have the depth of character to not give one damn about what people think of her? How can she love soccer passionately, playing tough and running hard with the boys, and yet be terrified into screaming idiocy by spiders? How can she collect both skulls and porcelain dolls to display equally with pride on the shelves lining her walls? How can she cry, her tender heart splintering because a friend asked out the boy she adored, and yet move on to forgive that lifelong friend and keep their friendship alive?

Right now she sits at home, a little melancholy because both Mom and Dad had to work today. She's waiting for us to finish up so we can go for our dinner and movie date. Still a sweet, tiny, fairy-girl who drifted in from another realm, she just wants to spend time in the loving presence of her parents. But, Dad and I both know, we are the lucky ones.

Happy Birthday, Little Princess, I am coming home to see you.

Love and Blessings,
Mom

(Photo by Jyothi Sacket: In the Moment Photography)

Finish the Story; a Mother's Tale

2008-11-20T08:49:00.001-05:00

Children are not very forgiving, at least not of the flaws of their parents. It was a good idea to begin with or so I thought. They harass me, incessantly, on long drives, on slow evenings, on snowy days and dark, close nights in the confines of our camping tent, to tell them stories. They don't want the store-bought kind, the ones some other writer has struggled to create. They want me to tell them tales off the top of my head. They give me a theme, "Mom, tell us a story about a sea-turtle and a jelly-fish." "Tell us one about a mountain lion and a squirrel." They're nothing if not imaginative. And so, I sigh, close my eyes, and begin.

A tale told by the seat of one's pants is not an ordinary kind of story. Strange things happen when you allow your imagination to run free. There is no editing, no careful choice of word. The force of the story moves itself, the unexpected abounds. I listen carefully with my inner ear. In that slight pause before I speak, I grasp the tale from the nothingness and weave it into being.

I find, I like these rambling, unpredictable tales, so I decided to write them down. Why not put them into books of my own? Other children might like to read them. Another struggling writer-mom might be grateful to be able to read a story.

I don't have a lot of writing time, like most artists, squeezing it in between dinner and home work, soccer practice and the weekend chore-list, between kisses goodnight and the pull of sleep. Writing these stories was a good idea, but it's hard to recall it all to words in a single sitting.

Advice to all writers: Do not read your children an unfinished story. They do not respond positively, at least my kids don't.

"Read the end." The 7 yr old said. I had kept him and his 9 yr old sister completely captivated right up to the point where the old man was bobbing in the black, black sea.
"I can't read it, I haven't written it yet." I was thinking of course they would understand.
"This is the worst story ever." He glares at me from his warm blankets. "It doesn't have the end!"
"Yeah," His nine-year old sister agrees, "It doesn't even have the mermaids, yet."
"It needs the rest." he says.

Of course it does! I just haven't written it yet.

Note to self: Children do not make good literary guinea pigs.

There are many risky moments on the rocky road to achieving a dream. Moments when you could throw up your hands, turn tail, and crawl back into the safety of your quiet cave. Should I be flattered or horrified? They loved the story, loved it enough to be very upset that it hadn't been finished. I feel obligated to finish it now. Before, it was just the hint of idea, the pale, frail glimmering of opportunity. Something I could set aside, work on at leisure. Last night, fate made an edict. To save face with my kids, I must finish the story. Weary from work, disconsolate with my minuscule time to write, I worked on that story long past the time when my babies lay dreaming, till my eyes were grainy and my vision blurred.

Shhhhh, don't tell them, but "Tell Me a Story of the Old Man and the Sea", is nearly done.

I'll let you know if they like it.

I am Alive

2008-11-17T13:23:00.000-05:00

writing hides inside my throat
words burning to be spoken
in frail fingers
struggling to make their meaning known
in the stillness
where all life is born
words arise
as ghosts from ashes
the silent observer
sees everything
and speaks about the slant of sun
the breath of wind on lips
eyes colliding
life aching to be born
it comes to me as gift
and offers me salvation
all I have
is strength of spirit
willingness
writing comes
I answer
and so
I am alive

Autumn in Virginia

2008-11-06T10:34:00.000-05:00

Why do I love Autumn in Virginia?

On the 6th of November, it is sixty-six degrees of sun-filled sky. The morning breeze sends orange and red leaves skittering across the pavement. Clouds of birds fly over my building heading further South. The steady stream of diving, dipping, chirping life lasts for 25 minutes. How many thousands could that be, making their merry way to sunnier shores? I stand staring up, open-mouthed, until I realize what is falling from the sky, polka-dotting the cars in the lot.

The evidence of fall is here, in the mama and baby bear who wander through the pasture, four eerie eyes, bright in the flashlight beam. They set the horses to stamping and snorting and send my daughter's heart skipping into triple beat. They were merely looking for a place to hibernate. "Not in our barn!" She says.

Autumn sports are played in the brisk, chill mornings, we stand screaming and shivering in hats and scarves, fingers gripping hot coffee, the steam swirling into empty air. By game's end, we are in shirt-sleeves, cold coke pressed to forehead, while the sun seeks to turn our skin to the same russet of the leaves.

Autumn is a kind friend in VA, bringing simple gifts of the full fall harvest, the colored leaves, and lazy sunshine. The cold nights cast a frosted glow on every morning, but roses still bloom in our front garden, slim and regal, floating on their green-coated stalks. Past the weighty, viscous heat of summer, and before the bitter ice-rains come, fall rests, offering a lull in the passing seasons, time to pause, to watch the birds and reflect on nothing more than beauty, simplicity, and the natural wonder of our world.

I Am Created

2008-11-04T13:09:00.000-05:00

My mind was created by something greater than me
the secrets of my heart
the greatness knows
the flowering tree
giving air
sweet fruit
ever pure in service
the wide world
wraps her arms around me
cradling this one
thoughts rise like bubbles
from the depths
they are not my own
I did not make them
I am not of them
a great, still force
flows
and
I am created

Dreamland

2008-11-04T12:36:00.000-05:00

Some mornings when sleep tries to shake itself from my brain, I just want to forget the world and sink ever deeper into nothingness, to remain in my dreamlands, where colors are brighter and the vague, sweet longings beneath the surface of the day, become my bold reality.

I fly in my dreams. I love the feel of rushing that sweeps me head to foot as I realize I can thrust myself off the ground and into the great, dream-sky. I dip and dive over hills and swaying branches, a dream-wind sliding over me, and look for things I never let myself have in reality; waterfalls, open fields, horses that change color.

Sometimes I see you in my dreams, and wake with you beneath my skin, closer now than we would ever be on Earth. In the clear waters of my dream-mind, I take on the colors of your soul, and wear them like an inside cloak, a talisman against the waking day. Though time may pass, and distance wear forever on, in my dreams, you are with me ever still.

I am Writing

2008-10-27T09:27:00.000-04:00

10/23/2008

I am writing this from my 8th floor hotel room. My ears are cold from the wind, my hair blown out like a frizzy halo. It is not beach weather. When I walked back from the gift store having bought presents for my precious children left at home, there was not a soul on the beach. I could see a mile in either direction. No one was there but me and the gulls. I think, maybe, even they thought I was crazy.

What is it about the ocean wind that blows the mind clean? Even my thoughts take on a fine-edged clarity. A pale lovely woman with a faded holey shirt, tattooed, rough around the edges and a handsome young black man helped me pick my presents, staying open five extra minutes so I could find something for the five kids at home. They were the solid workers, the ones who stay on after the seasonal rush, stuck by reasons all their own in the barren tourist town, helping the occasional traveler, like myself, who is only here on business.

The buildings along the seaside were gray and drab without the colored towels and swim suits, without rainbow umbrellas, and a hundred different shades of skin, coolers with cool drinks, lawn chairs and beach toys to distract from their blocky solid stance, the first stone barrier against the sea. In one room, a Christmas tree stood, its twinkling bright lights the only thing to be seen. In another, dark shapes moved across the window, ghostly, silent people thinking lonely thoughts behind the glass.

For me, this great quiet solitude is entirely new. Never before in my life has my time been wholly my own to manage. No dinner to prepare, or homework to complete, no stories, complaints, no fights to break up. I miss my noisy brood, but find this vast emptiness of duty to be other-worldly. I am my own self and nothing else. Time is mine to do with as I choose, and so I sit here and write and sip hot-soy-chocolate, legs curled under me, listening to the hum of the heating unit as it tries to thaw out my ears. There is a waterbirth article I need to write that will be translated into Russian. My fingers know the keys and my mind hums like the heater in anticipation. Words slide their way through my wind-clear mind and lay themselves onto this page. And so, in pure, sweet contentment, I am writing.

The Cauldron Pot

2008-10-20T10:41:00.000-04:00

I am always trying to relate to myself. To figure out, to analyze, what is going on from the inside out.

Writing for me, is like a force of nature. The moment comes upon me, the mood, feeling, idea, the story appears like a pulling force, a hurricane, a tornado, a deluging rain. Or it is stark and baking, like the desert sun, sparce and full of meaning. Always, it is something that comes with power, grace, and beauty, something that can't be avoided. It's difficult at times to manage such a thing. I wrote this one, thinking about that...

The Cauldron Pot

I reach inside the cauldron pot
arms long and stretching
looking ever inwards
to the me beyond

what does she know
this inside self
deep below the surface
where jelly-fish glow whitely
blinking in the blackness?
whales are only wave-makers
massive swells of darkness
bold
I grasp their swishing tails
down to the depths we go
where pirate ships have sunk
and buried sweet white ladies
their bones bleached clean
alive and blue
the glimmering soft-fish
light her sternum

she wakes and grins a bony grin
laughter bubbles
from blue-black sockets
Ha! Ha!
she laughs
and down she goes
her sea-weed hair
drags
all a-glow
I follow
deep and deeper still
darkness black
and eyes dead blind
I grip the tendrils of her hair
and leave my skin and bones behind
when next I see the emerald sky
the pale pink morning
on the shore
I clutch the frail strands of her hair
and weave them into something more

Put the Book Down

2008-10-15T16:33:00.000-04:00

I have a very dear friend who has been under attack recently by chickenheads who didn't like what he had to say on immigration. While deeply sad for him, I could not understand what it was that was making these attackers so upset. If they didn't like what they were reading, simply put down the book. Don't read that one, then another one, and another, working yourself into a hateful frenzy, looking for more reasons to despise someone you barely know.

Put the book down.

We have freedom to avoid anything that causes us distress. We don't even have to think thoughts that are worrisome, anxiety-producing, or anger-building. If you don't like what you are reading, put the book down. Not every word was written to reach all ears. In the same way that I have faith that the words I am writing were meant to be written, I have equal faith that the ones who are meant to read them will find access. In this world view, I suppose the attackers were meant to feel angry, hurt, or out-of-control. He got some pretty nasty e-mails. I know because I read them. They accused him of being exactly the opposite of what I had found him to be. They said he lied. He is one the most honest writers I have ever read. They said he had the story all wrong. He was there, he lived it from both sides of the angry border. For him, these words gave him strength, made him stronger. Through fire, they honed him and made him more into what he was meant to be. For the chickenheads? Who knows?

Life lessons like this are not painless, but my friend, in his honest wisdom, sent this quote to me and I think it says it best:

Sometimes it takes darkness and the sweet
confinement of your aloneness
to learn

anything and anyone
that does not bring you alive

is too small for you

--David Whyte

We may not like the chickenheads, the ones who would attack us for who we are, but even this bright burning brings with it a gift. For me, on this day when I was attacked (possibly with justification) it has made me into something stronger, more determined to speak my mind, to stand tall and clear, flawed and flawless, as I am.

Over the Hills and Far Away

2008-10-07T11:50:00.000-04:00

When I was a we'en, I ran like the wind, liking nothing better than the feel of my heart pounding, the rushing of blood through my veins. Through the forests and over the hills, gulping leaf and moss scented air--this alive--I reverted to the wild in me, to the voice that whispered the same soft rustling as the sun-tipped leaves. I drank the air and light and sound of this un-human world, sustenance and protection against the mundane life that I awoke to every morning.

This is how I survived my childhood and the pains I couldn't bear. I ran them away, over hill and dale, letting the gasping of the effort blow them away.

But, we grow old and we grow slow and we no longer hear the wind that calls our name. Responsibility makes its weighty appearance. Age stomps in and demands decorum. We buckle and fold and forget the sunshine days.

Or do we?

Somewhere deep inside of me, on quiet nights, I can hear her wild howling--my wild miss--lurking in me still behind my many faces. Yesterday, like any other day, I drove the winding road home from work. The breeze snuck in my window and settled just under the edge of my skin. I put on workout clothes and stomped to the basement to lift weights. There was no room in the basement, a project had all the items from one locale leaking over into my exercise space. I dragged back up the stairs, longing for the rush of blood.

The door burst open and the wind blew in, "Run with me," she said.

"I'm going for a walk," I announced and of course they wanted to come.

Three tall lassie's and one fine lad. We dressed in shorts and tank-tops, laced our shoes, and out we went...walking.

I didn't know then that the wild in me had been born in my brood, but the hills knew their names, and called to their swift feet, away they went, galloping, a herd of two-footers and I forged after them. We dodged the trees and leapt over rocks and fallen logs. They laughed like clear water and bobbed through the rippled light, fairy-beacons, frolicking, guiding me on the path back to myself.

And the wild one laughed and is laughing still.

JMU Paren'ts Weekend--How Could I be So Blessed?

2008-10-06T13:43:00.000-04:00

The thing about motherhood is it always holds surprises. We went to Parent's Weekend at James Madison University where our first born is studying away to achieve a BS in Computer Science. We nearly didn't go, what with the other five to attend, with groceries, and house-keeping, gardens to weed, and trim to be laid over the new porcelain tile. So many things to stand in the way, but we went because it was Parent's Weekend and we are, after all, his parents.

We met at his tiny, less than pristine apartment and sat around looking at funny things on You Tube, laughing at soccer bloopers and rude English TV shows. We met up with his Love and her parents and proceeded to commence upon a walking tour that was very, very long--but also beautiful. We talked, meandered, laughed and joked in the fall sunshine. We all stood in the center of the circle and clapped to hear the squeaking penguin. (you have to be there to understand) We took pictures with James Madison who is a tiny, little man. I wondered, would he be horrified at becoming a bronze statue where giants routinely draped purple and gold beads over him, threw their arms around his neck, and took pictures for their facebook sites? That lofty scholar could never have considered such a thing.

The Love knew everything about the campus, and the buildings and told stories and directed us to points of interest along the way. The parents leg's grew crampy, hips began to hurt, feet blistered. But no one stopped smiling. We had lunch at the funny little hippy cafe. And iced coffee (thank God!) mid afternoon. Dinner was Pizza and beer in the Love's apartment. We sat and shared stories, laughed and relaxed. A "Bonding" experience is what the Love called it. And, indeed, it was.

But for me, it was also something more. I got a glimpse into the life my son had chosen to create for himself. A look at the bright shinning star he had set up to guide him. How could you not feel inspired on the green rolling campus? How could you not want to achieve with history and inspiration all around you? When we passed the football stadium, (we won 49-0) and the purple and gold streamers littered the land, a big sign hung over the side of the building, it said "Welcome JMU Parents." Was it in that moment my heart burst with pride? Or had that sign just made me aware of what had been building all throughout the long, unassuming day. I was so proud of our son. Neither of us went to college. We had turned down an untraveled road and decided to write the map as we went along. How had we made him? He is much too smart, too talented, too focused, and hard-working. He belongs on that campus where the cross-walks are painted in school colors, where the blue stone buildings lend weight to the minds who have come to learn. I could see he belonged there. I could see he was content with the choices he'd made. We drove home, exhausted, much later than we had planned. But my sleepy heart was singing, the song of a mother who finds her nestling has grown fledgling wings and is aloft upon the wind and that little piece of me that is with him always can feel the rushing air as the current lifts him ever higher.

How could I be so blessed?

(Photo by Jyothi Sacket: In the Moment Photography)

Writing is My Monastery

2008-10-01T12:13:00.000-04:00

writing is my monastery
in quiet spaces
between the words
I know my self

Lorch, Germany

2008-09-26T08:41:00.000-04:00

Lorch, Germany

Why can’t I be in the Rhine Valley in Lorch Germany, with its quaint houses surrounding the lake? I could dive into cold water, wash the fatigue and grime of tedium away, leaving my skin aglow. A brisk walk in the early morn to find my coffee, and seek out friends and neighbors could start this day. We could talk about how we slept or didn’t sleep, how the wind howled or the cats screamed, or our dreams kept us awake. In Lorch, I could lay my burdens by the lake-side and let the fishes nibble them away. I could care only about how blue the sky is, how the wind feels cool upon my face. I could leave these painful dreams behind, lie back on the green grass and stare at the clouds that only have to drift along on a carrying wind, never wondering, never worrying, with no lost dreams, and no regrets. I could float like that in that tidy hillside village far away.

Writer's Desk

2008-09-24T16:25:00.000-04:00

I've been looking for my desk. Having started 'writing' again, I've decided I need one. A place for just my things. With odd objects bearing mystical meanings known only to me resting in perfect spacing on its hard-topped surface. A place to sit and contemplate, to chew the end of my pencil, tilt my head sideways at the keyboard and wonder.

I intend to create magic as I write. To pull something out of nothing, put down words that no one has ever read before. To wind them in a tangled, lyrical fashion so that they sneak up on people and surprise! This is no small thing to be trying to accomplish. One needs all the help one can get. A Magic Writing Desk could surely be useful. It could lend its ancient, weighted wood to my ponderings. It could lend its solid steadiness to my wayfaring thoughts. Truly, the right surface, the right pen, these things make a difference. Just as the right pictures of ghosts and gods, goddesses and relatives, far vistas and reptilian creatures on my walls watch over me and grant me their support.

Alas, it has not come. I sent the winged message on a prayer. Knowing, in these things, it is best to let the spirits make the acquisition. And so we wait, my desk and I, until that moment, long decreed, has arrived. Then we'll sit in blessed emptiness and create these words together.

The Funeral

2008-09-19T17:04:00.000-04:00

The Funeral

The hard-backed pews bear witness
death came on swift, fleet feet
from out of the shadows she rose
and laid claim

The weeping widow
left behind
broke in the noon-day sun
the trees and I both weeping
but the frail heart breaking is not my own

The pieces left for wind to scatter
I touch with tender hands
and pray
to say the words she needs to hear
pour my life
through the gap in her chest
and somehow bandage this wound
I know will never heal

Death came but the living bear the burden
of the blue sky
and the globe going round and round
of brutal time continuing
on and on
without them

We bear witness to this loss
the eyes so grieving
mute to truly comfort
the inevitable blow
of frail life passing

The Same Eyes

2008-09-11T12:48:00.000-04:00

There must be something about the dentist. I like to lie in the chair and stare at the ceiling. There is nothing for me to do, no problem at home or work I have to solve. I breathe. I refuse the offer of TV, even of music, and I blink slowly in the bright light, languidly, watching my eyelids descend. I realize I am seeing through the same eyes as I was on the day I was born. Everything has grown, has changed, except these eyes...

Hi Dad!

2008-09-09T08:56:00.001-04:00

Hi Dad!

It seems fitting that you would be the first commentator, as you are the reason I started writing in the first place. Your stories had a big impact on me growing up. I am loving this blog as well--even if it is only me, you, and a few of our close friends and relatives who are reading it! Anyway, I don't know about Pulitzer--I want to write POPULAR fiction. :>
Love you, too!
La

Six Kids, Six Schools

2008-08-27T11:58:00.000-04:00

Today, I have six children in six different school systems. One in primary school, one in elementary school, one in middle school, one in high school, one in community college, and one in University. How am I ever to keep up with it all? I stand outside my life, looking in, and think, "Is she insane?" She laughs a lot, that has to be good....

What I really know is this....money could give me big houses and fast cars, beautiful dresses, and diamond rings. Fame could give me a name in lights and millions of adoring fans. I could have gone to school and gotten a degree, had a career as a high-flying executive. I could have raised horses, joined the peace corp, or run away to live in the East. Instead, I settled home, found a man I loved to share my life, and began having children. Six of them, 3 boys, and 3 girls. I am so proud, I can hardly see straight and I love them so much, it makes me cry. They are the work and art of my life. I can't imagine any existence more rewarding or full of greater joy. With tiny toes, and smacking lips, with late night cries, and teen-aged arguments, they have given me the thing I value most--the chance to be something truly wonderful...a mother. There is no love like that I feel when merely looking at their faces.

I love you, kids. Thank you for coming into my life and letting me be your Mom.

And if you think I'm going to be able to make it to all of your conferences....well...I'm not saying I won't try.

Cheers to all you Mom's out there!
Love,
La

The Sign Post

2008-08-21T10:47:00.002-04:00

It's funny where inspiration comes from. Something seemingly unrelated can trigger a thought, or a feeling. I wrote this last evening while I was driving home from the dentist while thinking about my 18 year old son, who is thinking about moving to England.
(Not to worry, though, I pulled over before I wrote it.)

The Sign Post

The Sign Post

He stood still
on the side of the road
paint cracked and peeling
words etched into the wood of his face
faded to dusty-gray.

He watched them come for miles
bright clear faces
longing for the sea
or to climb mountains.

He pointed the way equally to them all
the angry ones
looking to hurt someone
the sad ones
searching for a place to die.

Boldly in the wind and rain
while sun bleached his face to white,
in fog that hid him
in snow that buried him
he watched them come and go
sometimes wistful
sometimes with no thought of them at all
Just standing
as he was made to do
a sign-post by the side of the road

The Truth of Me

2008-08-19T11:30:00.000-04:00

I don't understand how the hardest thing for me to be...is me.

All other definitions come easily to me, mother, wife, daughter, friend. These I know and have been successful at being for years. My own me, deeply hidden in the recesses, cringes in fear at the light of day. She hid herself from view, not sure if this world was safe enough. And with great zeal and creativity, created other hers. And lived as them. Now, I want out. To live my life in a straight line. To say, not what you want me to say, not what experience has taught me you want to hear. But to speak the words that rush, that barrel up from the bottom. The truth of me. I slide easily around inside myself, ducking behind corners, falling into manufactured selves. Out of fear, for safety, because it is easier and what I'm used to. But every now and then these days, I feel me, stepping out and shaking the water from my fur, blowing in the morning air. Surveying this fair landscape. For whole moments, I leave the shallows of my pond and walk naked as I am.

A beginning

2008-08-15T16:18:00.000-04:00

I don’t get out much. It’s a disadvantage of living in the middle of nowhere and raising a large family among the hills and trees. I wouldn’t trade this wild, secluded way of living, the leaves that rustle outside my window, the raccoons who come to eat cat food off my back deck. But the world is wide and wondrous. I long to know the scent of unfamiliar spices, the lay of a different land, the foreign hum of people chatting about their daily lives in a language I can’t understand. I may never get to leave my house in the gully and see everything I want to see. I may never get to talk to a woman in New Delhi about what it is like raising a child in her land. I cannot help wanting to know.

I have started this blog to share my life as an American living in Virginia. I will post the funny, quirky things that happen as I wander through motherhood, housewife-hood, and now as a career-mom. I feel a need to share my stories, to give you a glimpse of the world as I see it. I also want to see yours, the color of your day, the mood of your morning ritual. My hope is this will become a place where you can tell me the little things, the color of your coffee cup, the view from your bedroom window, but also the deep life stuff, difficult things you are dealing with, challenges you face, dreams you have that you still hope will come true.

I hope you will join me in this sharing and exploration. I look forward to reading about even the seemingly insignificant, whatever the world has shown to you that you would like to show to others, whatever gives a glimpse of what it is like to be you, living your life, in your world, in your “view over here.”

Peace and Blessings
La