Love after Love

The time will come

when, with elation,

you will greet yourself arriving

at your own door,

in your own mirror, 

and each will smile at the other's welcome

and say, sit here. Eat.

You will love again the stranger who was your self.

Give wine. Give bread.

Give back your heart

to itself, to the stranger who has loved you

all you life, whom you ignored

for another, who knows you by heart.

Take down the love letters from the bookshelf,

the photographs, the desperate notes,

peel your own image from the mirror.

Sit. Feast on your life. 

~ Derek Walcott

It is hard to give my kids my undivided attention. Amidst the work commitments and the school assignments and the homework (oh, god, I still hate homework) and listening to the torturous learning to read (which he has to subject us to for 20 minutes every single freaking night) and bedtime (can I please still have a bedtime? Just make me turn everything off and be D.O.N.E.) and the chores and laundry and the tomatoes that are getting soft waiting to be made into sauce . . . . 

But sometimes, they DEMAND my undivided attention, because they need it, as much as I need them. And, sometimes, they make me wonder how much else I'm missing. 

Husband and I were having an intense conversation about something that had a deadline, something we needed to decide upon RIGHT NOW, at dinner while the littles entertained each other with their banter, or maybe they were squishing banana between their toes.

I became vaguely aware of Middle Child saying, "MOM!" I attempted to "listen" by turning my body towards him while still facing and talking with Husband. 

"Mom. MOM. MOM! Mom mom mom mom-mom-mom-momomomomomomomom!"

"WHAT?!? Jimminy Christmas, is someone on fire? Can you wait TWO minutes?"

"NO! I have an important question." 

This is my child who is so easygoing, that if he doesn't get milk after asking for it once, he will get a chair, cup, and towel, open the fridge, pour his milk, sloshing a little, put the milk away and clean up his mess before I realize what is happening, and he isn't mad. He is just that resourceful. And I know I only have him for a little while, because the world is his oyster, and he will resource his way right into whatever he wants regardless of whether or not I am holding his hand. I've actually asked him, out loud, if he will come visit me when he is grown up, because I know already that he won't need me. 

So, naturally, he had my undivided attention now, eye to eye. "What."

His eyes are wide, and serious. 

"Do alligators ever burp?"

*blink*

What else am I missing?!? 

The 'Goldbug' Melancholy

Richard Scarry books are among my most treasured and favorite EVER. The drawings, the way the typeset on the page is obviously done in a time when typewriters were part of the creative process, the randomness of the characters and stories.

I bought one in Taos at my favorite bookstore, Moby Dickens, which is right off of the plaza on Bent Street, across and down the road from the store that hangs bells made from retired buoys. Ring one next time you're there, and I dare you to keep your soul inside you.

I also have one that was given to me as a toddler by my uncle Rick. Somehow it's still intact and not torn, and only has three pages with crayon additions to the original print.

Almost every night, I reach for one of these books, and try to subliminally make my kids choose it for bedtime story. But they usually don't, so I end up looking for Goldbug in 'Cars & Trucks & Things That Go' by myself.

I realize that the books I love are probably not the ones my parents loved, and probably not the ones they wanted me to love the most. But there are still a few that I know my parents loved and that I love just as much, like Maurice Sendak's 'A Hole is to Dig'. I realize that many of the memories that are special to me are not (probably) the ones that my parents would've picked for me to keep, and the ones they would've picked are mere blips on the radar of memory if they exist at all. 

It's hard to help my kids learn how to live, without living vicariously through them. It's hard to let them make their own memories and not push my wishes for memories on them. 

Music, though . . . . somehow that's more enduring.

We went to a wedding in May and the opening song was one that my Grandad used to sing, so I was crying before the first bridesmaid even set foot in the chapel. And it got better, in that every single song was one I know by heart because someone special sang it to me at some point. I was glad I had tissue stuffed in my bra, because I needed one from both sides. 

So, that night, I sang my kids to sleep. I sang all the songs I could remember and the ones that were most special to me. I ended with the Lords Prayer, because I heard it again at the wedding and had forgotten it. I can't remember all the words in the right order when I say it, which might automatically demote me from being a preacher's daughter. But sing it, and I can even recall it in the King James Version. 

I don't know if my kids will remember Goldbug, but I hope they remember that song.

The first attempt at poetry:

Triumph

It's a difficult marriage, between tragedy and fate

and Hope is conceived in a womb of despair

She grows secretly, cloaked in smothering darkness

until the light begins to beat

so gentle it might be mistaken for a simple shift in the water's weight

and her soul becomes mercy

so the stars adopt her

and whisper the wisdom of the ancient

and the love of the bosom who never held her.

The angels watch her grow, careful to balance sage against the coarse edges,

keeping her just ragged enough to deny power any chord in her harmony

and even Time himself awaits his turn to touch her face and bows tenderly to her grace

and, thus, her pull is matched only by the moon and its waves.

Incline

So, I hiked the infamous trail in Manitou this afternoon. It used to be a cog-style railroad famous for being the steepest section of train tracks in the known universe. I rode it a time or two as a kid, and remember the cold feeling I got in my chest when we had to go back down and I realized that, if the cable broke, we'd plummet straight down into hell. The railroad stopped operating in 1990, when a rock slide mercifully took out the tracks. Click here if you want the full story, or pictures.

Now used strictly for hiking by insane and sadistic people, it is a near-vertical scree slope crisscrossed with railroad ties, exposed rebar, and open drainage pipes begging to give you a justifiable reason for another a tetanus shot. It takes you, at the top, 2000 feet higher in elevation than you were when you started, in less than a mile, at grades of up to 68%. (Most staircases are about 35-40%.) Among locals it is known simply as "The Incline", which is, in my humble opinion, a gentle and benign description meant to lure you quietly to your hypoxic demise. It's more like "Steep-ass-suffer-fest-with-a-bunch-of-shit-you-could-hurt-yourself-on" trail, and you have to pay $5 just to park at the bottom. There is even a row of port-a-potties lining the trailhead in case you look at it before you start walking, in which case your insides will instantly turn into water.

For those of you who are deathly afraid of heights, it really is best if you just keep moving forward (or, up, as it were) and don't look behind you, lest you are able to take in the incredible vista that stretches across the city all the way to Kansas. But don't look up, either, because that's just as bad--maybe worse--unless your brain is already so deprived of oxygen that you notice the 3-inch lizards scampering out of your clumsy path to take refuge under a rock, or hear the whistling buzz of hummingbirds pulling you up one more step. If you look--really look--up, you can even see the false summit which looks for all the world like the top until you are two steps below it. At that moment, it is not uncommon to hear people curse their very existence as you pass them, especially when they are young, fit, Army Rangers, and you are a middle-aged mother of three who keeps a little extra padding around the hips in case there is a famine. (Granted: they were from sea level Georgia, and I live here.)

If you make it to the top (and you will, because once you pass the halfway point, going down is certain death for your knees and ankles) you appreciate all the work that has gone into making that trail fit for foot traffic. The railroad ties have been reinforced in many places, and you can see where a zillion feet have worn gently curving groves in them. There are rough wooden bridges over the sharpest drainage pipes, and strategically placed rocks as extra steps for us vertically challenged types. There are even places where you can stop to slosh a gulp of water into your face in hopes that some of it will make it to your mouth, and you can hope for two seconds that the apocalypse would come RIGHT NOW to end this torture.

But, you keep moving, because there might be a cold beer at the bottom (plan ahead!) and chances are high that the deranged person who passed you at a trot a few minutes ago will be at the top with a high-five. They might even offer to take a real picture to save you, in your state of duress, from taking a selfie.

My time was 46 minutes. And I didn't even cry.

Breath

There is nothing trivial about coming home every night. Even on the days when I know my rockstar hubs is going to be gone, which means I have to figure out what to feed the short people (who eat ALL. THE. TIME--thankfully, they don't seem to get tired of the eggs-quesadilla-tomato soup rotation). 

Every day, over and over, I am reminded that not everyone gets to come home. Or, at least, not to their earthly one. 

There are days I am just glad to get the heck back to my rockstar and kiddos, glad that we're all mostly healthy and mostly happy most of the time; other days, I need to take my time coming home to process the empty spaces in my heart that people leave after they are gone. Then there are days that I have the chance to talk with people about the hole they are going to leave in a few days, or weeks. Every time I do that, I seem to focus on their breathing. My attention is naturally drawn to the rhythm of breath, even near the end when it is studded with gaps and rents and discordant hollows. 

Those are the really, really special (not easy, mind you) times that mean I work out on the rowing machine (even though I have never actually rowed a real boat on real water) because I can do it with my eyes closed, listening only to my breathing. That's when I can reach out and let my spirit fall into the rhythm of the air around us that we breathe that is filled with those who still want to be near us. 

It fascinates me that the original pronunciation of YHWH is lost. Scholars assume it to be Yahweh, but, like so much about history, this is an educated guess based on what we know about the context. Biblical and Pentatuch scholars alike note that YHWH is used most often when describing God's relationship with people. This intimacy is like breath, and when you say YHWH slow, without a lot of vocalization, it sounds like breathing. 

Maybe it's a stretch, but it doesn't seem completely accidental that the one thing that comes most automatically, and that we need most desperately to survive, sounds like the Name itself. 

Think about that for a second. Listen to your own breath. Feel it moving in and out, rhythmic. 

. . . YH-WH . . . YH-WH . . . YH-WH . . . 

Even when we are not thinking, or even believing, our very breathing says the Name. 

The dependency of our spirits on the YHWH is as automatic as our bodily lives are on breathing. Even though I can't completely wrap my mind around that, I know I don't have to, because I  . . . can . . . . just . . . . . breathe . . . . . . .

. . . YH-WH . . . YH-WH . . . YH-WH . . . 

On Easter and Nerdlings

This season of spiritual holidays left me in a state of near-constant reflection. I am always captivated by the very secular interpretation of Easter and the fact that it is kind of a made up holiday, for which a translation accident is partly responsible. (For more specific information, click here for a succinct and accurate summary by the History Channel). 

Don't get me wrong, the religious significance is massive, and represents the crux (play on words intended. Thank you.) of THE love story of all time. The political significance is also staggering, especially if you put the character of Christ in modern-day geo-politics. The saying "live like Christ" takes on a whole new--and, face it, terrifying--significance. 

I also love Love LOVE the Jewish tradition of Passover. The events and story of the Israelites leading up to the Passover is one of the most meaningful stories in religious and global history. It really is the first salvation story. And the fact that it is paired with the Passover Moon, or Blood Moon, makes my breath catch every time I am blessed with clear skies to see it. 

But, more on my spiritual musings later. Here is where Easter week and "Real Life: Holidays with Nerdlings" intersect:

Dyeing Easter eggs is a loosely held tradition in my upbringing, usually culminating in green dye being spilled on a green-and-brown calico carpet, and massive amounts of deviled eggs and egg salad, and at least one egg that gets missed for months, only to be discovered after an argument that culminates in a fistfight about who farted. 

This year, we skipped the tradition, and opted for an early Easter egg treasure hunt in KS over spring break. In the mix of festivities, no one really missed it this past week. 

We did, however, embark on a discussion at breakfast one morning about where eggs come from and how humans might have figured out they were edible. I'm pretty sure there is a fine line between genius and insanity, and I won't place bets on which side of that line the person was on when they figured it out (along with drinking 'whatever comes out of those things when I squeeze them' regarding milk--it was probably the same person).

I am also pretty sure I have the only kids in the world who call each other "cloaca".

It is decidedly more disgusting than calling each other "butt-face" or "fart-head", although it doesn't generally cause quite the same reaction amongst peers on the playground.  In case you aren't familiar, a cloaca is the "the common cavity into which the intestinal, urinary, and generative canals open in birds, reptiles, amphibians, many fishes, and certain mammals", according to Webster. In other, less elegant terminology (thank you, Sister) it is the butt-gina where the eggs fall out.

I am quite certain that zoo camp this summer will provide even more fodder for unusual insults, which may or may not require the insulted to google the term on one's smartphone while the insultee gloats over his superior intelligence, even though he may or may not be bothered to tie his shoes.