I mean think
of what a miracle
you are
born of stars
held here by
invisible threads
fraying

What did you do
when you knew
time was unwinding
from the spindle?

I took lovers
made grandiose motions
in my taut and
creamy skin
It was dangerous fun

I tried to solve
a wounded man with
naive love for ten years
You can imagine
that didn't end
as I'd hoped

Ah, but we laid together
in our karmic hammock
making babies
And when the moon
called them from my
womb, I held them
I loved them
That's what I did

It was not glamorous
It was messy as birth and
as glorious
We breathed here together
on a living orb
spinning in space
I mean think
of what a miracle

An eventual delight

Now my womb closes, like

a lily at dusk, now

I look to the sky, and

see her, our spirit baby, stealing

away, our girl who may never be, I

see her stealing away. My sister

of sisters, my daughter,

 

I drove across the bridge this morning,

and saw on a sister-bridge, a train lumbering,

her boxcars rusted so beautifully.

I imagined, I hoped, there were oranges

inside, their sunshine

an eventual delight

to the soft mouths of thousands.

I glanced

 

at the riverbank below, green and

musky, the silted leaves, and

I knew, I knew how

Moses’ mother surely wept

with faith fragile as the cereus

that blooms only one day, as she

laid her baby in the reeds.

This helpless love...

I remember being so sad when the soft, downy hair of Caleb's and Tavish's newborn ears was one day gone. I remember running my fingertip along the suddenly smooth and hairless curve of their month-old, pink ears, realizing that motherhood is a series of endings. I wanted to stop time, curl up and never have to wake from the blessed newborn symbiosis of their body, my whole world; my body, theirs. Who ever wants to wake from such a love?

But who would want to stop their child from growing more fully into his glorious self, to stop their child from running more and more deeply into the lush forest of her dreams and destinies? No one, of course. And so I must surrender to the bittersweet paradoxes of motherhood: the wider I open the doors of my heart (wide, to that place I fear the hinges will bust), the closer we grow in love; the looser my grip on them and on life, the more securely we attach to one another; the more grounded and rooted our home, the further they will one day fly from it.

"They will go. They will go," Time whispers to me every day. I know this. I know every effortless beauty, and every exhausting challenge ends. It all ends. Too quickly, it ends. And yet, all I can do is fall helplessly in love with every freckle, every chubby cheek, every dimpled hand, every fragile, turning page of their lives, knowing the whole time that what I love cannot possibly last.

Oh, this helpless love. It can break a girl's heart. But what greater thing are we made for than this, this helpless love?

Huckleberry

"For the record, I do NOT want a dog," my husband had told me, "but I'll get one for you anyway, if that's what you really want..."

I think he was feeling sorry for me. The whole not-having-another-baby thing was--and is--depressing me, and I think we both thought a dog might ease it.

That was a couple of months ago, and after exhaustive, obsessive research, I decided upon the perfect breed for me: the Maltese, or, as my husband affectionately refers to it: "the faggiest dog you've ever seen in your life."

"Uh, honey...thanks for offering to get me a dog. We won't be going to the pound, though. What I really want is a dog like Leona Helmsley had--the one she left like $10 million dollars to? Which is about how much one of those dogs costs."

Some days, I don't know how my husband tolerates me.

Luckily, I was able to find a four year-old Maltese who needed a home, and we got him for a song. Well, I'm not sure that's how my husband would characterize the cost, but you know. We got him for a third of what you'd normally pay. So, like $3.33 million.

The kink was that I had to travel to Florida to get him. Don't ask me why I couldn't find a suitable dog in Virginia. Let's just say they weren't expensive enough.

Ok, so somewhere between my husband agreeing to get a dog and actually getting a dog, I might have built up my expectations a little high for what this dog was going to do for my broken heart. But nothing could have prepared me for what ended up happening.

I woke up in the middle of the night on a Saturday, flew down to Florida, spent the day with Huckleberry's owners, then flew back with him that same day. I almost missed my connection in Atlanta on the way home, and found myself running through the airport with the doggie freaking out in the carrier slung over my arm, so that it must have looked like the carrier itself was alive, the way it was bouncing and dancing like some sort of carry-on mosh pit.

I got home at midnight, and painstakingly followed Cesar Millan's advice on how to introduce a new dog to your home. We didn't get to bed until almost 2 a.m. But no matter: I was elated to finally have in my possession the furball of my dreams, who was going to be the perfect distraction, the perfect companion, the perfect salve, the perfect salvation.

I woke up to find this dog for whom I had meticulously pored over all manner of doggie books and blogs, shopped endlessly, and sleeplessly traveled two thousand miles in one day to bring home 100% attached to my husband, and completely disinterested in me. My husband, who did not even want this creature. My husband, who was not only perplexed by the dog's intense affection for him, he was actually disgusted. He kept looking at Huckleberry, asking with disdain, "Why? WHY?!?!"

I went upstairs and cried my eyes out.

And then I poisoned the dog.

Kidding, of course. I would never kill something we'd paid that much money for. I set about doing something I have had a lot of practice doing: convincing a male who wants nothing to do with me to love me.

One thing I know for sure: I. will. win. Just ask Jay. When we first started dating, he told me he wasn't ever interested in getting married again, having more kids, or, for that matter, having a committed relationship. Oh, REALLY? We'll see about that...

Again, Again!

Again, again, even if we know the countryside of love,
and the tiny churchyard with its names mourning,
and the chasm, more and more silent, terrifying, into which
the others
dropped: we walk out together anyway
beneath the ancient trees, we lie down again,
again, among the flowers, and face the sky.

~Rainer Maria Rilke

Land that I Love

Ok, so. I'm not quite ready to talk about it, since it was so major, but I did want to say how grateful I am that my husband bought me a ticket, took a week off work to stay with the kids, and sent me to Colorado to visit my beloved family and the land of my birth. Holy Cow, it was amaaaaazing in so very many ways. Healing and good and right. It had been twelve years.

My people and the land welcomed me with such love and tenderness, such light and beauty, such reverence and gentleness, like a prayer. It was just the thing the bruised petals of my heart needed. I found myself splaying open those mangled outer petals to reveal the center of the bloom: pure, protected, soft, sacred and new.

It was like I had been holding my breath for a very long time, the most fragile parts of me wrapped in a tight bud, and I finally got to exhale, open and just be beautiful and loved. I didn't know I had been waiting for that until I began to burst open, and then the deepest parts of me began to sing, "This, this is the medicine I have needed..."

Our Joy Birth

We celebrated our water-borne baby's third birthday this week, and what a loving, joyful birth it was. For the rest of my days on this planet I will carry with me the blessed memory of that sacred birth, its magic simple and wild and natural. I am so grateful to have embedded in my mind a memory so pure and filled with light.

My water broke at two in the morning and Tavish was born two hours and eleven minutes later. It was a whirlwind birth that took every bit of concentration and surrender I could muster.

I loved the feeling of leaning against my husband in our living room in a birth pool with candlelit water holding us as waves of contractions started like a whisper across the room and culminated like a brass band, all cymbals and horns and bass drums trembling my every cell.

I loved pushing with all my glorious might, pushing the way the light of dawn pushes out darkness.

I loved releasing his perfect body from my body into the water's open arms, then bringing him gently into our arms so full of wanting and waiting.

I loved the sound of his first breath, the sweet exhale. I loved his wet and warm body against mine, and then the crying, the crying like a hundred thousand red poppies blooming.

I loved every moment of that birth, our joy birth.

And Tavish boy, I have loved every breath of your young life since.