Our sweetest Easter
He doesn’t know it’s today
He always knows us.
Lotion on each hand
I gently massage his feet
Hours he will forget.
Who needs Easter eggs
We found joy in front of us
Spending time with him.
Tofu and the Three Ghosts
My immediate future is bringing me a delicious stir-fry for dinner. I started preparations for that future several hours ago when I removed the tofu from the freezer and set it on the counter to thaw. I learned the hard way that frozen tofu doesn’t actually unfreeze itself by sitting in the fridge overnight or for 24 hours. Not gonna happen. But counter-sitting for the tiniest amount of time — like an hour or an hour and a half — the package is leaking like a sieve! And do you know what’s so funny is that I wrote leaking as l-E-E-k-i-n-g, because I was also thinking about leeks. I’m often thinking about leeks in my future, full disclosure, although I’m not planning to include leeks in tonight’s stir-fry.
When, about two hours ago, that formerly-frozen tofu showed all the signs of being ready, I liberated it, along with what always seems like a gallon of water, from its sealed package. I own square dinner plates that individually weigh five pounds. No joke. These plates are not messin’ around. I do not own a tofu press, unless you count my homemade press built out of eight dinner plates piled on top of one rectangle of tofu, their combined weight approximately 40 pounds. That tofu will be good and squeezed in my near future.
I sometimes fear looking farther afield than tonight’s supper plans, much like Scrooge when he said,
“Men’s courses will foreshadow certain ends, to which, if persevered in, they must lead . . . . But if the courses be departed from, the ends will change. Say it is thus with what you show me!”
I can see the perseverance of other plans playing out — my birthday trip to the beach, my weekly conversations with my far-from-me mother, my completing my repeat reading of my favorite Dickens’: David Copperfield, and no matter how much my boyfriend doth protest (he doesn’t at all, actually) our protagonist will not magically become the magician David Copperfield incarnate at the story’s end. Although, wouldn’t that have been a triumphant foretelling of future’s tidings by Master Dickens, himself?
What else might the future bring, unchecked and unchanged as our behaviors and patterns and choices might be right now? The crystal ball’s illuminations are so dreary as to wish me right back to Kansas with a dog of my own to hold and to unsee such tidings. Supper plans, be they stir-frys or salads, mean nothing next to the harrowing pile (not that we would pile them, but imagining them that way isn’t difficult) of bodies, dead at our own doing, our own civil war being fought and waged in the hand-picked and preferential battlefields — in the classrooms of children, in sanctuaries of peace, and even in the produce aisle.
I know I’m future-gazing, but that future has me turned around, looking behind me, remembering a picture taken of my then-five-year-old sitting on her school bus looking at me through the window with the grin of all grins, her moment of ecstasy was that moment. Nothing else compared to that future in which she had arrived, fully-prepared, in complete ownership — and the look of triumph on her face will be one I never forget. I do have the picture, but I don’t need to look at it; that face is forever in my heart and in my head.
Yesterday’s future moment seared in my mind forever: an image of a similarly-aged to my once-little girl, her face looking through the school bus window, tears of sheer terror running down her cheeks, her future forever-changed, no triumph or victory awaits.
So what might the future bring? It took Scrooge three visits from three different specters to understand and to grasp the reality that in order for the future to change, he had to change his right now — his behavior, his choices, his opinions, his rhetoric, his investments and his collaborations.
My future is bringing lots of delicious dinners, for sure, but my future-gazing also has me constantly turning around, looking behind me, around me, avoiding places of public gatherings for any purpose: churches (okay, I don’t go to churches for other reasons, but still. . . ), movie theatres, and concert venues.
My tofu and my heart are leaking today, both of us releasing our water-logged selves of the grief that seems to be the ever-present ghosts of our past 24 years, our present living nightmare, and our future accumulation of more senseless murders. But perhaps the ghost’s visit yesterday will be the one that scares us into a different future and we can all get off this carousel, whose only mounts are intricately-painted forms of PTSD, Terror and Grief, whose patina of money, freedom, thoughts and prayers is worn down to the original surface showing through in broad patches. My future self is done crying and done being dizzy.
Being Human
Seen: the tears I can’t not cry whenever I speak my brother Peter’s name.
Unseen: the clinch that tightens around my throat with my tears’ falling.
Is this a cause and effect? or is it simply Grief’s calling card?
Seen: their 59th anniversary prompt on today’s calendar.
Unseen: the lump I swallow around, thinking if I swallow hard enough I won’t cry.
Is this going to happen every March 14 until I, too, am not here to swallow?
Seen: me hugging my almost 25-year-old daughter so hard.
Unseen: the internal argument I’m having with myself because I no longer have her all to and by myself.
Will I ever learn to share what is definitely my most precious thing ever? Do I have to?
Seen: the most amazing man loving me, walking with me and holding my hand all night long, every single night.
Unseen: the terrorizing thought gripping my chest that he will leave.
Do trauma triggers and PTSD ever go away?
Seen: shelves upon shelves of books behind and around me.
Unseen: my fear that I’m not smart enough yet so I rage read to wrack up more volumes finished.
There’s a reason I set a limit of 52 books per year. Maybe this year I’ll not exceed it. Not likely.
Seen: me holding the microphone and singing loudly, “Maybe This Time,” and “I Feel Lucky” in front of the room.
Unseen: my pounding heart that’s not pounding so heavy it blocks my throat like before and before and the time before that.
I hear me as I open my mouth, like there’s an Oreo sitting on my tongue. Just like that.
Seen: my friend is sad and says it’s hard for him to be with himself.
Unseen: my immediate walk back in time to all the times I struggled to be with myself, too.
That journey is hard and lonely. I know. And I know it will transform you. You will Become, just like the Skin Horse. And just like me.
Seen: documentaries, podcasts (heard) and news stories about Mormons, Fundamentalists, origin stories and current events.
Unseen: the weight of my emotional separation from my family and their rights, their wrongs, their moralities.
Who can ever say when the crushing wound will happen to you? Or how it will splay you open, exposed and vulnerable to the man behind the curtain. . . .
Seen: me living my best life, finally.
Unseen: me living my best life, finally.
Can I bottle this up and stock my own shelves with it? Self-Preservation is the gift that keeps on giving me my Life.
Mama
I lean in to smooch her cheek, her skin is always so soft, for as long as I can remember back. And my memory plays like a record; I lift and move the needle to start at my earliest memory, which of course were her hands. I loved touching them, holding them, observing the backs of them, every detail seen under the microscope of my fingers’ touch. Smooth and soft. And her cheek as I kiss it depresses slightly because the needle has moved to another memory, not of my mother, but of a deliciously-chunky five-year-old sitting quietly in the circle of other young children, and one of those children leans into Delicious’ face, like I lean into my mother, but unlike me, that leaning child bites the five-year-old’s cheek instead of kissing it. “He mistook you for a doughnut,” I say soothingly to the five-year-old, seeing he’s not happy about being mistaken for a doughnut. Another groove found in the record: I don’t mistake my mother for a doughnut, but she and I do love going through the drive-through for the raspberry-filled ones.
The Dark Side of the Moon
Years ago, and for many years, my brother and I were partners in business. We always joked we stayed in business for years longer than we wanted to be in that particular line of work because we loved being together every single day. Work was merely our vehicle for relishing and growing our friendship as brother and sister.
I could write an entire book on the escapades we shared growing up, the jokes we coordinated and played on our favorite teacher (#sorrynotsorryMrsOsborne), the fact I was even in that class as a sophomore alongside my senior brother, the locker we shared at his insistence — and the love notes he would leave for me reminding me every day how important I was to him and how happy he was to be my brother — the open arms and heart way he completely took me in to his life, to his friends’ circle, to his love of soccer and the NFL, the late nights we spent discussing politics and SNL as a commentary in the late 1990s, and the way he picked up the phone and took my call all the way from North Carolina while he was in the middle of South Korea. My brother was my best friend.
We worked primarily with middle managers and taught them the soft skills of leadership, the things no one teaches yet expects you to know when you find yourself in a position of management. There’s also a pretty big distinction between management and leadership, but that’s a rabbit hole I don’t want to go down right now. I’m only talking about this because I wanted to give you some context for what it is I want to tell you.
So during these monthly training sessions, we would often play games to engage everyone together at their tables to work together, you know soft skills in action. And one of the games we used was an exercise in deductive reasoning. We showed a clip from the gripping movie, “Apollo 13,” starring Tom Hanks — you remember the scene in which they realize they need a square peg to fit into a round hole in order to make it back through Earth’s atmosphere without burning up like a brisket on the barbecue? It’s tense. And it’s all about cooperation and truly coming together to create the solution that saved those astronauts’ lives.
Anyway, we gave everyone a piece of paper that included a list of 15 supplies on the space ship. The assignment (designed and used by NASA) is this:
Scenario: You are a member of a space crew originally scheduled to rendezvous with a mother ship on the lighted surface of the moon. However, due to mechanical difficulties, your ship was forced to land at a spot some 200 miles from the rendezvous point. During reentry and landing, much of the equipment aboard was damaged and, since survival depends on reaching the mother ship, the most critical items available must be chosen for the 200-mile trip. Below are listed the 15 items left intact and undamaged after landing. Your task is to rank order them in terms of their importance for your crew in allowing them to reach the rendezvous point. Place the number 1 by the most important item, the number 2 by the second most important, and so on through number 15 for the least important.
I’ll go ahead and tell you — yes this is a spoiler — but your numbers 1, 2 and 3 must be #1: two 100 lb. tanks of oxygen (remember there’s no gravity on the moon, so these aren’t going to weigh much at all and will be easily carried), #2: 20 litres of water (apparently you lose a LOT of liquid on the light side, so you’ll need this to replace what you’ve lost), and #3: is a stellar map (because obviously the stars are your only navigational tools in that location).
Next time you’re given this test of your mental agility, you can impress everyone with your celestial knowledge. You’re welcome.
But anyway, that was a lot of back story to tell you that I’ve been thinking about the dark side of the moon as a place that actually exists, and that you and I can’t exist there, at least not for long and not without the right supplies. And I was thinking about my brother, who loved facilitating this exercise; he would always get so excited talking about the possibility of being on the moon in the first place, and then showing the movie clip, which he illegally spliced together, seamless blends between the chopped-up scenes and portions of dialogue — he was always so proud of that compilation and made sure to tell me after class had ended and we were left alone cleaning up our supplies and laughing, how proud of that illegal clip he was, not because it was illegal, but because he’d made something without seams. He was like that with his driving, too — from the moment I started driving he demonstrated on repeat the importance of pressing the clutch and shifting the gears without anyone knowing or feeling it had happened. I think I’m such a good driver because of him.
Ever since his accident, the seamless bond that always existed between us got ripped. It can’t ever be repaired and that’s only the fault of the driver who ran the stop sign on that clear morning five years ago. My helmeted and lighted brother on his bicycle both went down as court evidence. Even now, and since then, I do feel like one of us is on the dark side of the moon — separated from the other, and no amount of oxygen, water or stellar maps will ever bring us safely back together.
This heart of mine aches for and misses my brother who traveled to death and back again. He’s physically here still, but forever changed. If I could take a trip backwards, I’d just use it to make a quick phone call. But I don’t think space ships or mushrooms as modes of transportation travel backwards, either one. We’re only always moving ahead in time and I’ll keep using my right now moments to close my eyes and remember all those hours we spent together imagining which supplies we would need to have when he and I get stranded on the dark side of the moon: laughter was our favorite one, every single time, and it’s not even on NASA’s approved list.
The Leaf Heist
Carl’s cleverness (and to be completely open and honest with you, I’m not sure how clever he truly is because there’s Carla to tell you about, and I mean no disrespect to either Carl, himself, and certainly none toward Carla) was no match for his wife Carla’s self-anointed deservability. Their 25 years together had at least taught him this much: what Carla wants, Carla gets. Sometimes (most times, more like) that getting was both Carl’s responsibility, as well as his shame. You see, Carl carried things, inside his chest, and he’d learned a long many years ago not to share those carrying sort of things with Carla, because well, Carl didn’t like to think back on it, but the quick remembering of it was enough to tuck all those feelings and such right back in again. So he just carried them quiet-like.
Carl wasn’t what you’d call a big man, no. He kept himself trim in most things: speech, hair, tucked in his shirt at all times, no matter absolute what, and truth be told, even tucked in his shoulders when he spoke to you, his eyes always looking just beyond, beside, or below your own. Learned to keep trim, he did.
So when Carla said she needed, no must have and deserved, some freshly-fallen and perfectly-gold Gingko leaves for her annual and every-year different Christmas display, Carl could hardly protest, now could he? It was at him she directly looked and her eyes didn’t look anywhere but directly, piercingly through you. You know she had this habit, or maybe it was just her way, of forcing your eyes to look directly at her eyes, except one of her eyes was permanently crossed so where were you supposed to look? Seems embarrassing to admit it, but I know personally how awkward those stare-downs with Carla can feel, and then imagine old Carl over there every single day, being stared at every time old Carla wants something. Not for me, says I, but I know this one isn’t about me. Don’t mean to sidetrack you here, but I just feel for that old Carl.
So anyways, here’s Carl in a stare-down, forced and all, with Carla over and about these leaves. What even in the Sam-hill is a Gingko leaf, says I when Carl confesses his latest, or newest if you will, errand. Mission, more like, says I, because this is Carla we’re talking about.
“Well well that’s the question to answer, isn’t it?” he asks me back. “I hadn’t thought of that at all,” he says, and I think to myself, that Carl is so small, I think sometimes.
I’m no professor, lord knows, so I don’t myself know about a Gingko leaf, but gold I know, and I know we’ve got more than plenty of gold leaves littering the ground of the entire town these days, but these days are numbered, mind you. I says this to Carl, because if he’s been given a mission, to be sure it came with a due date. No disrespect to Carla, but I’ve been there on some occasions of those stare-downs, and I know I, myself, don’t like to get caught in the cross-stares, and I’m starting to think maybe this is when I’ve watched Carl shrink a bit, if a man could shrink, just a bit.
I can see the worry on Carl’s face. Who wouldn’t be? And we know the only person we — or he, because I’m certainly no part of this, except for the parts Carl shares with me, which aren’t many, but I’ve seen the faces, you know — can ask for clarification is also the only we person we can’t ask. Carla, of course, is who I’m referring to. But believe you me, we can’t, just can’t, ask about a Gingko leaf.
Carl figures, and I figure he’s right, he’ll just load up the supplies he needs: a rake (which to be sure was the shortest-handled one I ever have seen in all my born days, which makes me wonder has Carl never had to rake leaves before?), a garbage bag, and a tank full of gas. I offer to ride along, as a sort of leaf-spotter, you know? And we head out up and down neighborhood streets, just looking for some yellow leaves, but not just any yellow leaves, figuring, and I think rightly-so, that these must be a special yellow leaf. And most folks don’t have so many leaves, anyway, or if they do, they’re so far back from the road, so it’s awkward, you know?
And it’s getting to be where dusk is waxing and we’re not going to be able to spot yellow after much longer. And then he and I see them at the same time: like a pot of gold at the end of rainbow, except it’s not raining outside, but there is rain coming tomorrow; my knee already foretold me that much. And we pull over, stealth-like, and Carl parks his minivan in the road, at the end of the driveway, and I just hope no one needs to come in or out of that drive, that’s all I’m saying.
Carl jumps out of the driver’s door — pops the hatch, grabs his short-handled rake (and I’m going to be completely open and honest with you here, but I was laughing out loud) and he proceeded to run up the drive, but only halfway, leaving the hatch open behind him, and I stayed right where I was because I was just there for leaf-spotting and saw that I spotted those leaves and my purpose was complete, and what was I going to do but get in the way of the only rake Carl had?
And that’s when I looked up the drive and took in the whole house on the hill before us, the driveway we squatted on, and saw someone working at her desk in the front window, lights fully on, staring out at oblivious Carl raking furiously away. I bet he thought he was cellophane, a stealthy retriever, but it was obvious to me this was his first ever heist of golden leaves, and I speak from personal experience here. And he scurried into the yard, pulling more leaves onto the driveway, and I could feel his heart beating faster, louder, as we — no, he — raced against the daylight, but most loudly in his own trimmed head against Carla’s deservedness, and he would not be berated for a failure. Not this time.
Carl rushed back to the open hatch, grabbed his white trash bag, hurried back up half the steeply-inclined drive, and with one hand holding his trash bag and the other scooping and shoveling leaves in record-time into the same bag, he left behind more than he took. Truth be told, he made more of a mess in that woman’s driveway than when he arrived. I’m just gonna chalk that up to complete inexperience with leaves and the raking of them, but that’s just me observing. And he flat-out took, without permission, but every demand would be met, Carla’s I’m sure you know. And there she was, waiting in their short flat driveway to receive and to see those golden leaves on his return.
Mission accomplished.
Misusing My Imagination
Yesterday my imagination was a semi going too fast down a mountain road with no runaway ramp to slow it down; it was completely out of control. And I was the byproduct of that messiness.
Monday, the first day back after a long (and much-needed break from all-the-things) Thanksgiving holiday. Monday, also the first of only 15 working days remaining on this calendar year before the week of Christmas arrives, bringing with it more (still-needed) respite from all-the-things.
Scheduled meetings, and many not, punctuated the morning hours, whittling them (the hours) down to mere minutes remaining on the clock and then, there were none. No minutes making up hours were left.
Picture me picturing myself at this noon juncture: one very not-put-together human managing and simultaneously spinning multiple activities, which activities included but were definitely not limited to: three loads of laundry, sheet changing (because Clean Sheet Day will be observed at our house, at any and all cost), client outreaches and responses via email, text, and email, surprise/unscheduled phone calls (thank goodness they were on the phone and not on video), loungewear being worn because a self-promised bike ride was still in my future (and on the other side of which ride would be a glorious hot shower, and on the other side of said shower would be clean, lovely and intentional clothes, you know like a put-together outfit), meal planning and preparing (mind you this was merely on the LIST; it was definitely not being done, dear reader, not at all), scheduled meetings and conversations that were always meant to be had, the putting away of various bags, boxes, containers, and necessaries congregating at the top of the stairs that decidedly belong down, returning a pair of borrowed shoes that came with a pleasant, albeit ill-timed, conversation because friends will be loved here only always, and the folding of sheets and socks and towels upon towels for those lucky enough moments when bike rides happen and brows are mopped.
And in the time it took me to create that inconclusive but lengthy list for Patrick, you might now picture me picturing myself at 6pm with nothing but hanging chads littering my imagination’s floor, nothing complete except for the soap dispensers at every sink basin being now refilled.
And what tale had my imagination been writing all day that I was now reading in my mind’s eye?
Only this: that I was a waste of space, never completing anything, terrible at tasks and their management, out-of-shape and probably fat and undesirable because of it, unkempt, definitely not put together, lacking a plan for supper because I am a failure at doing anything and while we’re looking through the kitchen file, how could you not have gotten your bread starter started so you would now have fresh-baked bread tonight? Oh, and remember the pizza dough you started ON THANKSGIVING?? It’s still hanging out in the refrigerator just waiting to be taken care of, you dolt. And your sweetheart will be home any minute and you have what to show him? He’s totally going to be unimpressed with you and this will be — YOU WILL BE — the reason he rejects you.
My friend Steve Chandler said, “Worry is a misuse of your imagination,” and dammit, he’s right, right?
Thank goodness my imagination’s creation was only entirely made up.
Curtis and I promptly (well I swapped my lounge pants for “proper” pants first) went out for dinner at our favorite Mexican place, his hand firmly holding mine, and my heart wrapped up and held by his loving reassurance that the product of my day’s imagination was ridiculous. Not me, my imagination’s creation.
And that’s it: worrying, storytelling, fear-mongering, self-shaming, guilt-tripping, negative talking, overwhelming. . . they’re all just a misuse of the imagination.
As it turns out, none of those things I made up about myself were true — far far from it, in fact. What did yesterday actually look like?
-First day back from holiday with a bang!
-Crushed all client calls, the planned and the unplanned ones.
-Managed SIX separate accounts, each with multiple people involved.
-Completed — sorted to folded to put away — three loads of laundry.
-Put away all extraneous/leftover items from holiday fun with family.
-Walked the dog.
-Fed the dog.
-Had meaningful and important conversations with two friends.
-Held a much-needed space with my mother in a difficult moment in her life.
-Scheduled our annual health insurance review.
-Showed up fully for my two full-time jobs.
-Confirmed my ukulele lesson for this Saturday.
-Changed the sheets and made the bed beautiful.
-Said yes to everything and to everyone that mattered.
Today I am managing my imagination and creating stories that serve and honor me and the truth of who I am: threads weaving together the tapestry of my created life.
P.S. I got that bike ride in first thing this morning, put on a put-together outfit, and realized the benefit of a well-timed burrito is way more powerful than all of yesterday’s runaway trucks combined.
Acorns and Oak Trees
There’s a massive oak tree in my backyard. I didn’t know it was there, or more accurately, that it was an oak tree because of course I knew the tree was there. But there’s a difference in knowing something exists in physical form, taking up space, doing whatever it is that trees in my backyard do, and in knowing there is a Mighty Oak in my backyard whose canopy covers the entirety of my back deck and beyond into the side yard.
Let’s rewind the clock for a brief moment so I can tell you how I came to know of this Oak’s existence, or perhaps more accurately, how the Oak made its presence known to me.
I live on top of a hill, which hill is at the top of the town in which my mailing address resides. I am tagged and attached to that zip code and to that street number, both of which comprise my mailing address.
Side note, when I submitted a change of address with my last move, which of course resulted in my now residing in the house on the hill with the Mighty Oak out back, apparently the US Postal Service weren’t the only ones I notified. So interesting how networks work, right? The behind the screen scene of sending and receiving and communicating and connecting and coordinating the happening of things fascinates me, even when I’m not thinking about it at all!
Back to out back.
In late September when the weather is at its perfect and peak combination between day and nighttime temperatures we bask in the back deck outdoor eating opportunity. We plug in the string of lights we have strung across the deck and which lights interlace the beams of the grape arbor gracing the entire southwest corner of said deck. Underneath this grape arbor resides a rectangular table with glass top I bought from my friend’s found-in-her-basement-pile. There were six chairs to complete the set and I bought bright and big new cushions, gold + blue + porcelain white, which have now in six months’ time, collectively absorbed more rain than all the bathtubs I filled for personal soaking in as many months. I love baths.
Back to being on the deck.
I heard the first acorn drop in the middle of a September afternoon when I happened to be walking through the family room. The family room is deck-adjacent; they share that outside wall, and the sound was so loud to startle me from my focused-with-a-purpose walk into the kitchen. I probably needed to replenish my tea for the afternoon hours yet remaining at my desk. I like to brew a matcha tea latte or an apricot green tea blend to stimulate my brain in spite of the sinking sun.
After that first drop landed loud, they were everywhere and at all times falling, acorns from heaven, as it were. I know Moses said that’s where the manna comes from, right? Anyway, acorn drops became the background musical accompaniment to my entire day and even the lullaby that woke me in the middle of the night. Constant contact with the deck, with the roof, with the steps leading up to (or down from, depending on which direction you’re walking) the same deck. That deck was littered and laid with a brand new seasonal carpet on whose surface to walk would require an insurance policy against it.
Safety first, am I right?
That carpeting — and my cautious covering of its distance to take the trash out — is what caused me to look up as if for the first time. Where was this abundance coming from? And that’s when I really saw the Oak for the first time — as an actual Oak! My mind exploded considering that this one massive tree was born out of one tiny acorn such as were now littering my entire 1000 square feet of deck.
Everything this Oak Tree needed to become and to be exactly who it is — thriving and living and giving of its current abundance — was contained within just one of these tiny acorns.
This tree, which has been behind me all along, made its resourceful, resource-full and resource-filled Self known to me in an out loud and like a juggernaut kind of way. I see you, Mighty One. I finally see you and I won’t unsee you now.
As a quick post-script, most of the acorns are now gone, disappeared one at a time, and I imagine them taken, tucked away and stockpiled by each of the families of squirrels and chipmunks living in my backyard, just like this Mighty Oak. Look at all the living going on here! Look at each of them in their resourcefulness and not one of them doing anything other than exactly what they’re born, wired, and know instinctively to do, which instinct is all they know.
My pause and wonder is looking at myself now. What if I stopped questioning and overthinking and doubting myself and just allowed my inner wiring to operate itself? Believing that what I’m not seeing behind the screen of my own eyes is a well-tuned network of sending and receiving and communicating and connecting and coordinating the happening of things? All the things of my massive living loving life? It’s all here already, the seeds long ago planted and now grown into me giving away, dropping, and sharing the abundance of mySelf.
I hope you get to stand underneath the canopy of my resource-full love.
For Sale
Inspired by the photo above, I wrote the following piece of narrative fiction.
It’s 1948 and I can barely believe my eyes, let alone my heart, as my driver navigates through a neighborhood on the south side of Chicago I’ve never been through before. This isn’t our usual route to the newspaper but I trust he knows where he’s going and why. I assume there must be some sort of public protest happening and is the likely disruption to our normal routine. The housing situation is, I fear, a much bigger underlying issue, and one that we as a community are uncomfortable, at best, in addressing, let alone acknowledging. While I’ve never spoken this out loud to my father, I have relished numerous, and rather clandestine, discussions with Albert on race and its probable impact on the lives of so many in the Black Belt.
My stomach lurches into my throat and I think I might be ill as my eyes are drawn to four small children seated as neatly and cleanly as they can be on a wooden stoop not ten feet from my car’s side door. Planted in the patch of dirt directly in front of their sidewalk is a 3.5’ tall wooden post with a signboard stapled to it and the words “4 CHILDREN FOR SALE/INQUIRE WITHIN” painted in bold black letters.
Dear God, what is the meaning of this? I simply cannot believe my eyes have given me correct information and I insist we circle the block once again so I can confirm — or better deny — what I believe I have seen. Those four sets of eyes looking back at me looking at them as my shiny black car and clean window easily moved past their planted position of inquiry.
My heart pounds and my palms perspire in this misleading heat of a late September summer day, knowing the weather will turn on us in a moment and the harsh winds of winter will whip through these dirty narrow streets, knocking down signposts and exposing the poverty that seeps through the very brick and mortar making up the neighborhood.
My eyes widen and I catch my breath before it escapes my gaping mouth. They didn’t lie to me, my eyes. Here they are again, or still, for I am the one who has come round again, to bear witness to that which is unbearable to imagine: four beautiful babes ranging in age from two to six, the oldest a beautiful shoulder-length brunette girl with her arm around her little sister, a deep golden blonde head of hair spilling across her shoulders, but bangs clearly cut by her own unpracticed hand. She can’t be more than five and she is looking down and over at her just-younger brother, perhaps three, in his dungarees and no shirt; I’m guessing he doesn’t have one or he would be wearing it, his brown hair tousled to the best of a mother’s ability to tame the wild sweetness I see in his left arm wrapped around and pulling close to him their youngest sibling: another boy, whose two-year old heart looks endearingly at his big brother’s face with a trust I have never personally experienced.
I insist on stopping the car and climb myself out of the back seat, my gloved fingers clutching my patent leather purse, hat pin securely in place. I approach the woman in the floral print dress standing above her children, I imagine holding their hearts for as long as she possibly can, and ask if we may speak privately for a moment regarding her sign. I see her scanning me top to bottom, the way her eyebrows lift at the sight of my ensemble, taking in all it might mean and also the dissociation from all of me and what I represent. I am foreign currency on this street.
She nods her head slightly in agreement and we step inside the walk-up. I am not prepared for the dirt to accompany us in the way that it does, is just present on and over every item in her sparse and tidy apartment. I catch my breath for the third time this morning before it exits my mouth and transmute it into words that tumble out of me faster than my YES I said to the new shoes that are holding me up, supporting what feels insupportable.
“I will pay you to keep your own children. Please. Name your price.”
And it is done. Her mama heart bursts open and cleanses the dusty air with love overflowing, mingling with my own happy tears, uncertain what this all means and will mean, but knowing my heart has led me here and shown me the most important purchase I didn’t know I needed.
To Thine Own Self Be True
“This above all: to thine own self be true
And it must follow, as the night the day
Thou canst not then be false to any man
Farewell, my blessing season this in thee!”
— Polonius in William Shakespeare’s Hamlet, Act I, scene iii
But first, who is this: my Self to whom I am meant to be true?
Surely the night that follows the day and then the night again is led by that Truth, which Truth I trust is my Self. And said Truth, when followed, is True North.
I see: I am my own True North.
How to locate her in the vast array of brilliance shining above and around me? Where do I cast my eyes to find her particular glimmer that upon seeing will be instantly-recognized and from which all lines will be drawn outward?
Polonius reminds me I have a season of blessings in which to see, to pinpoint, to pattern my compass to Her. My karmic energy is vast and all-inclusive, my pendulum swings as big in my learning and grieving, as in my abundance and giving.
The unicorn, like a stallion arrayed in a cloak, whose Pantone shade falls somewhere between Rubine and Rhodamine, watches over and envelopes me, its opalescent coat shimmering in the distance as I align my heart’s beat to her hooves’ deliberate steps and pauses.
I gently and easily move my Self from the vast lapis lake, dropping off fear as I fill to overflowing the Courage I take with me to the top of the massive mountain range, where I find the mirror of Me reflected back in the rock’s golden Face, her eyes’ blue are remnants of the lapis left behind mere moments ago. Butterflies of recognition flutter from my midsection, no longer mistaken for or labeled as anxiety, my Sacral Chakra — overwhelmed with delight — takes flight, and I am atop the ancient wall (perhaps Jerusalem?) whose location is entirely inconsequential to what matters: my location on and to the wall, to the Grief itself. I see both sides now, my Courage (Strength) and my Matter (Abundance), sides of the Self that is Me.
To mine own Self, to my Courage and my Conviction, to my Matter and my Meaning, to my Love and my Loving, I will be True. My north is my present moment.
It is safe for me to spread my wings.
My wingspan is wide and vast and here to hold.
My Self is Love contained within the span of my reach, my wings, my heart’s beat, my bigness, my seeing of You.
It is safe for You to be held within my Self’s Loving.
My Self is found.
My Love knows no reach.
My Span contains for You.
Between Rubine and Rhodamine:
My cloak waits to cover You.
Lapis. Love. Lift.
Letting go of that which no longer serves or sits in me.
Letting go of the old, the other, the onus.
Opalescent unicorn of Self shining and lighting the way.
Feminine Primary Matrix cut and reconnected to the New Feminine: to my Self’s Own line of freshly-birthed ancient connection.
My blessing season stretches heart-and-year-round.