Seeking Peace

May 15, 2011

Good Sunday Morning,

Peace.  I seek it.  Actively.  Consciously.  It does not come easily.  In those moments I find it, I freeze, record every millisecond.

I find it most in my backyard, in those spaces there I have created for myself—to recreate myself.  I find it sifting dirt between my fingers, parting soil, counting seeds, covering them, watering, feeding, watching for the first push of stems, leaves through soil. 

Working there yesterday I needed music.  My ipod was in the drawer, under the stereo, fully charged.  The earbuds were upstairs in my desk.  I got distracted there.  Lost in bills waiting to be paid, photographs, a postcard you sent me from the Maltese Islands. 

“This is pretty much how it looks.” You wrote.  “Talk to you soon.  Love you, Andrea.”  You drew a picture of a heart next to your name.  I felt the joy you found in that day exploring brightly painted old wood doorways, looking up at window boxes full of red geraniums. 

Back in the garden, I had music.  I pulled weeds and sang along.  I did not care if anyone was listening.  The birds had woke me with their songs in the morning.  Some frogs began an orchestra of sound.  I shared my voice with them.  And with Sadie, who followed me around watching. 

Sweat began beading on my legs, under my arms.  I stood, turned my face to the sun.  My cheeks have turned pale, dark half moon circles sit under my eyes.  I felt the sun lightly brush its palms around my exposed throat, up my chin, across my lips, my nose, my forehead.  I was enveloped, I felt my skin color. 

I rolled up my sleeves, knotted my skirt between my legs.  Sweat evaporated in the small breeze—nature’s air conditioning.  Standing there I sang with Cat Stevens.  Peace.  My heart was untethered.  A white butterfly flew in, floated, wings elegantly flapped as it moved from one green leaf to another, making its way across the garden.  It felt like a blessing.  I felt tears.  I was full of too many feelings to name.  As Cat and I ended the song, I realized I had only paid attention to the notes, the way they formed a melody.  The notes, the melody faded into background as I sang along “…everything emptying into white.”  The butterfly lit on one more leaf, then flew away.

This morning it is raining.  Looking out onto the garden, everything looks greener.  I ask Steve “Am I crazy, or do the plants look greener, more brilliant in the rain?” 

He looks up, ponders my question for a moment, answers “They do.”

I ask him if he knows why.  He does not.  He thinks it has something to do with refraction and light rays.

I Google “why greener in the rain”.  The answer is elemental.  “Because plants use water, carbon dioxide and sunlight to create food.”  Yahoo answers.  When it rains, plants get a lot of water.  They rejuvenate.  Photosynthesis occurs.  Chlorophyll makes food from carbon dioxide, water nutrients and light.

Today the plants have everything they need.

As I sit here and I write to you this Sunday morning, I am listening to my ipod playing through the stereo.  Stella is grooming herself on a towel at the end of the table.  Sadie is asleep on the oriental rug at my feet.  Lisa texted me a picture of Annalise cuddling a baby bear.  In a couple of hours I will meet her, my sister Karen, Lisa’s daughter (my great niece Alicia).  We are going to dinner at Elliot’s and Mary Poppins at the Paramount. 

I tell myself, “This is all I need.”  And try to believe it.  I miss you.

                                                                                           Love,

                                                                                           Mom   

                                                                                     

Naming things

May 12, 2011

Hi tonight,

I was trying to remember the last time I had a vegetable garden.  I can not.  It was when you were alive. 

Tonight I planted three different kinds of lettuce, parsley, Russian kale and fennel.  The weather is supposed to be nice again tomorrow.  I will plant more.  Carrots, beets, zucchini squash. I love to watch things grow.  You did too.

You would love this home I have made for myself.  I have lived here one year now—settled in.  Last year in May I was unpacking, painting walls.  A friend came and helped me make a bigger patio.  I landscaped, put in sod.  The kitchen looks out onto a big rock wall.  In front of that I put a garden.  My backyard is my haven.  Hummingbirds and rabbits come to visit.  And there is a deck with a hot tub.  It isn’t big.  It isn’t fancy.  It is big enough for me.

And one other person—Steve.

You would like Steve.  He and I have a lot in common.  Most of all he is mischievous and makes me laugh.  We watched the same cartoons as kid, ate the same penny candy, loved Orange Crush.  He takes me for rides on his Kawasaki.  We take long walks around Capital Lake.  There are concerts laying on a blanket in the grass.  In all that, there is the grief.  With each of us, you cannot see it.  But it is there.  For his sorrow there is a name—widower.  Mine, no one wants to talk about, imagine.  How can you name it? There is no word big enough.

Steve’s grief is intimate, I am an outsider.  Mine is all encompassing.  I do not know what to do with his.  I try not to show him mine.  Though he has come and put his arms around me as I screamed at the edge of the pond until I lost my voice, then cried. 

Silently, we share our grief at night, when it is dark and we can crawl under a blanket together.  I slide in next to him, press my shoulders into his chest, feel his round stomach fill the small of my back.  I feel his body rise and fall as he takes in air, inflates his lungs, oxygen attaches to the hemoglobin in his red blood cells.  I feel his heart beat as it pumps hemoglobin in red blood cells throughout his body, depositing oxygen where it is needed.  He puts his arm around me.  I sigh.  He does too.  We can each be who we are, yet connected to each other.

“I don’t want to get married again.”  He told me on our third date.  I am not sure what it means, or if he means it.  Most of all I am not sure how I feel about what he told me.  I only know I am uncomfortable being called his “girlfriend.”  I want more than that.  I am too old to be a girlfriend.  Is there something other than a girlfriend and a wife?  What is the name for that?

We sit across the table from each other.  We have our laptops open.  I am writing this letter to you.  He has found something amusing.  He laughs. 

“It will be a year soon.”  I tell him. 

He turns his computer screen so it is facing me.  He is looking at a website with cat pictures that have funny captions.  This one is a cat sleeping in a chair in front of a computer.  The caption reads “Cure for Writer’s Block—A Can of Tuna.” 

I can only see the caption from where I sit.  I ask what the cat is doing.

“The cat is laying in the chair.  He is blocking the writer from sitting there.  A can of tuna will get him off the chair.”  He reads the caption again. 

I laugh.  I get it.  I tell him “I could not see the picture.  I do not have my glasses on.”  But really, sometimes I am just slow, now, to get the joke.  I don’t want to admit that.

“The Rapture is supposed to happen on the 21^st of May.”  I tell him, we have been joking about the Rapture for days.  We even talked about throwing a Rapture Party.  Have all our friends over for beer and Tostitos with guacamole.  “If we are still around after the Rapture, what do you want to do to celebrate our first anniversary?”

He looks at a calendar.  He is thinking.  

I am thinking too.  Maybe I can just let this be.  Perhaps I do not need to find a name for this, whatever our relationship is.  He can be Steve.  I can be Sherry. 

I can simply enjoy his warmth against my back at night, his arm around me.  And then the sigh. 

The weather is supposed to be nice again tomorrow.  Steve will dig the holes for the tomatoes to be planted in my garden.  He helps me build things here.  With him, I have gotten stronger.  Strong enough to plant a garden.

I am waiting to see what he comes up with for our anniversary.

                                                                                         Love you,

                                                                                         Mom  

Navigation

May 10, 2011

Dear Andrea,

I sit in the hot tub, nude, the only way I like it.  It is dark. I look up at the houses on the ridge.  A kitchen light goes off downstairs.  A bedroom light goes on upstairs, and then the bathroom light goes on and off.  It is not long before that house is dark.  From another, the eerie science fiction  flicker of a big screen tv seeps out into the night from every downstairs window.  Next door, on either side, the neighbors’ blinds are drawn.  The world around is oblivious to me.

Looking up I see a shooting star.  Counting the number of stars in the Big Dipper, I count seven. Starting at the tip of the ladle, I stop at each one and think of something to be grateful for.  This night of clear India ink stained midnight sky.  That I am writing. That my life is rich with friends, both old and new.  That there are children in my life teaching me innocence, laughter again.  That I love the work I do.  That I have found a way to open my life and heart to Steve, and he has found his way to me.   

Then I remember when you were barely 5.

I picked you up from daycare after finishing my afternoon classes at the University of Washington. In June I would graduate. In September I would start my first day of class at Harvard Law School. You would start your first day of kindergarten. In summer we would move from the shores of one ocean to another.  I had been talking to you about this, trying to prepare you.  I asked you how your day was.

You took my hand, balanced, skipped, danced with me leading.  “Guess what mom.”

“What Andrea?”

“We are learning about the earth.”

“You are? How exciting!”

“And all the planets. Mommy where is Boston?”

“I can show you later on a map of the earth. But it is far, far away from here. We will have to take a plane to get there.”

“Oh.” you said. I could tell by the tone of your voice you were making connections.   “A plane we are going on a plane?”

“Yes we are.”

For a few seconds there is silence.  “Well, you know mom,” you started, then hesitated for emphasis. “At least we will still be here on earth.”

You were so serious. Though I wanted to, I could not laugh. I got in front of you – then kneeled down and hugged you. “You are absolutely right – at least we will still be here on earth.”

That night, the fluid black sky shone clear, its air rinsed by our Pacific Northwest rain, punctuated by a crisp white linen moon. Before I took you upstairs to tuck you into the twin bed you and I shared, I took you out into the field beyond our patio where it was darkest. I got down on my knees, wrapped my arms around your warm pajama clad body, pulled you into the curve of my stomach. “Look.” I said letting go with one arm and pointing to the Big Dipper. “There it is, the Big Dipper.  You can always find your way home if you can find that constellation. Look off the handle, you'll find the North Star. You can always navigate from there.”

“What is a constellation?” you asked.

“It is a collection of stars that form a shape.  There are lions, and bears, and women in the night sky.”  I tell you.

“There are?”  You lay the back of your head on my left shoulder.  I feel your hair brushing against my neck.  I breathe in the smell of you.  “Can you show me the lions, and bears and women?”  you ask.

“Another night.” I told you.  The truth is, I only knew the shape of the Big Dipper. 

You smiled. I took your hand, traced the shape of the Big Dipper until I knew you learned it. Then I moved my finger over yours until we found the North Star and I could feel you know it. I wrapped both arms around you again, held you close as you memorized the sky with me.

I nuzzled my lips into your ear and whispered “We will always live together on this planet. We can always find our way home again navigating from these stars.” I kissed your cheek.  We left the field, headed for the lamplight shining from our living room window. 

Lifting myself from the warm hot tub, I feel cold air breathe on hot skin.  I look up to the sky, acknowledge the North Star.  I see light from the lamp on my bedside table shining through sheer white curtains on the second floor above me.  I am ready for sleep.

                                                                             Love,

                                                                             Mom

Blame

May 9, 2011

Hi Andrea,

            How can a person know so many, and yet feel so alone? It's too hard to hide the tears today. Why is it easy to forget the phone can dial out as easily as it can   ring? Why is it people can't see the important people right in front of them? Relationships by virtue require more than one person... Today I remember, the quote  I live by... "Friends are the family you choose for yourself." I can breathe again, for now...

Your sister wrote this on her Facebook Wall today.

I hear her hurting.  I do not know what to answer.

I wrote back, “I am sorry you are feeling bad.”

Nothing.

Yesterday was Mother’s Day.  Your sister sent me a text message, “Happy Mother’s Day.”

I texted back, “Thank you.”  And then a bunch of smiling faces.  Reading her Facebook Wall, I think to myself, “Was I supposed to call her?

I feel your arm around my shoulder.  Hear your voice in my head.  “That’s just Erin.  She’ll get over it.”

I don’t know.

I cannot stand in the face of all her pain unleashed, and live with mine.  Though some of it I may have caused unintentionally, unwittingly, I have held my own accounting.  It was far more rigorous and exacting than what anyone else could have done.  I have forgiven myself, and I have forgiven.  What she is left with now is hers.

She blames herself that you died.  She feels guilt she did not come check on you before she went to bed that night, in those early hours when half asleep she got up to use the bathroom, in the morning when she started her day, until late in the afternoon, when she opened your door to finally check on you.  And found you dead, with Sadie lying on top of you.  She knows she was angry with you, frustrated you were still living in her house. 

She has accused me of blaming her too.  But I know how and why you died.  I don’t blame her.  You would have died if a medic had been standing right in front of you.  The only thing that might have saved you is a double lung transplant one second earlier.  Or if someone had told you injecting dissolved morphine pills into your port would eventually kill you.

I don’t know what to do with this.  Any of it. 

So I retreat.  Because to save myself I have to.

                                                                             Love,

                                                                             Mom

Mother's Day Morning 2011

Mother’s Day, 2011

Dear Andrea,

I am sitting here this morning by myself.  I woke at 7, rain whispering secrets outside my bedroom window.  The birds overheard and started gossiping.  I tried to understand what they were saying—the rain, the birds.  They speak a different language.  I decided I just loved to hear them gossip.  I laid there, warm beneath the down comforter, Sadie pressed against my side and listened with my eyes closed. 

Today is Mother’s Day.  Writing through my tears, I still cannot accept that you are dead.  I make myself say “Dead.”  I write it on a piece of white college lined paper in black ink a hundred times like a punishment.  It feels like one. 

I avoid saying “lost”, instead of dead.  “Lost my daughter” makes it feel like I was negligent.  Like maybe if I’d held your hand a little tighter you would not have wandered into the crowd and disappeared.  “Lost” feels like I could go to that place in the department store where they keep lost children and give them a lollipop and Kleenex until their parents can be found, and see you sitting there kicking your feet back and forth, knowing I would come for you.  “Lost” feels impermanent, like my sunglasses I keep losing and finding again.

Nobody wants to acknowledge death.  Even as it sits across the breakfast table silently watching as we make our first cup of coffee for the day.  I try to ignore it.  But it is always there.  Yours, my grandmothers’, my grandfathers’, my mother’s, mine.

Death nods to grief.  I feel grief now, though I cannot see it.  No one can.  It follows me everywhere.  It sits in me like too many bags of groceries carried from the car to house at one time.  I cannot unload it.  It wraps itself around my wrists and twists.  It puts pressure on my legs and wears down the cartilage in my knees.  It pulls my back away from my spine between my shoulder blades. My chest is caving in on itself.  My breasts feel full, as if responding to a baby’s cry.

There is no escape. I grab a cup of coffee.  I wish I had a cigarette, but I don’t smoke.

I acknowledge death and grief this mother’s morning.  This is our morning. 

I bring your white scuffed baby shoes, the blue plaque that reads “Miss Andrea Ortiz Peterson; Able Seaman (Watch)”, I bring the picture of you and your sister and I at her wedding where I am smiling and you both are laughing, photo albums filled with pictures on beaches, living rooms, dining room tables, and the book I Am Running Away Today  you gave me when I took you to SeaTac to catch a plane to Ecuador when you were 16 and off to be an exchange student.  I find the pearls Scott bought you when your ship docked in Shanghai.  I put them on.  I find a black t-shirt with a pirate face and the words, “Worst Pirate Ever”.  I wear it and nothing else but panties and a pair of pirate socks.  I tie my hair back with your black scarf with white pirate faces appearing like polka dots. 

I am rocked by the truth in this.  Shaken.  If seismologists could measure it, I’m sure this would be a 9.7.  Everything is leveled. Lost.

Death nods at me.  Shows momentary sympathy.  It is just the way things are for everything living.  I don’t have to accept it.  But it is. 

I allow the tears to fall like rain.  The birds are no longer gossiping.  They are simply singing.

Annalise is being blessed today.  I must go get dressed now. 

                                                                                            I love you, Mom.

                                                                           

Gardening

May 7, 2011

Dear Andrea,

I quit TV.

I grew tired of everyone telling me how I should think, act, dress, eat, live my life.

Without TV, it is quiet here.  Today, I sit at my antique oak pedestal table, looking out at the fenced in piece of earth I bought a year ago, the green grass, the carefully tended garden full of roses, lilacs and hydrangeas mixed with rosemary, sage, thyme, oregano – I listen for you, my ears tuned in to every sound. The washing machine with its steady clicka clocka clicka clocka one, two, one, two. The curtains rustle in the breeze made by the heat vents. The furnace hums a single note to the clicka clocka clicka clocka one two one two of the washing machine.

I hear the sound of breath--inhale exhale--of throat swallowing, of heart pumping miles and miles of blood through arteries, veins, capillaries.  Blood that carries the luggage of generations of women before, all tagged, marked so as to be recognized – Thelma, Francesca, Diane and the great-grandmothers and their mothers before them. I am the daughter of these mothers and you are the daughter of me.

Mother's Day. Yesterday I prepared a place in my yard for a kitchen garden. I measured out the space I wanted. I hired Noah to cut the sod and move it to the neighbor's backyard. I dug and leveled a 4 inch trench and stacked cinderblocks to wall in the spot where carrots, beets, cucumbers, zucchini squash will find their home in dark rich compost.  As I look out this morning, the brown and black bare soil is an empty canvas illuminated by the sun. 

I planted garlic chives Sun Gold, Black, and Dr. Carlson cherry tomatoes in the large grey ceramic planters I bought at Costco for this home last spring. I made cloches out of empty plastic gallon milk containers to protect the new plants in case of frost. 

Two years ago you called me.  “Mom, my friend Nolana wants to plant a vegetable garden.  I told her you know how.  Will you come help her?  I’ll help too.” 

“I wish I could.”  I told you.  But I thought I was too busy then.  With what? I can’t remember.  But this morning, I would be remembering planning, planting a garden with you and Nolana if I had made time for that.   

Sadie is sleeping at my feet. The washing machine shifts from the clicka clacka, clicka clacka that soothed me, to some frenzied tap dancing on the outside metal tub. It happens in increments, my body reacting to the sound.  My brain is scrambled until I hear the sound of running water. Closing my eyes, it almost sounds like a river.  It is just the rinse cycle. I feel tense nerves relaxing.

The laundry room is behind me. It is in a closet closed off by folding doors creating a short hallway between the kitchen and garage. Earlier this morning, I sorted blacks with blacks, blues with blues, browns with browns, whites with whites. They all made neat piles on my kitchen floor. While I was sorting, I kept getting my big toe caught in a pair of white lacy underwear.  Walking away from the washer, I saw a path of dribbles on the floor where Sadie dripped water from her beard after drinking from her bowl.  With my toes picking up the first soft thing I found, I moved it and dropped it on the soft spot. With the ball of my foot I pushed it around and dried the floor. When I finished, I picked up what I’d been using. It was a pair of panties. I choked up a giggle, then a laugh.

Now I hear it, you are laughing too.  There are tears in your eyes. “Oh. My. God. Mom. That's something I totally would do to.”  In my mind you are back in your apartment in Virginia Beach where your laundry room was a closet with folding doors in a hallway.

Then it stops. The washer, the furnace, the laughter. I cannot swallow.  A rope of panic has wrapped itself around my throat and tightens. I stop writing. The pen sits on this paper bleeding ink. No words take shape.

I have to move, to get a cup of coffee. To move the load of finished laundry to the dryer. I know this. But I sit here in this moment on this morning at this table watching the sun spotlight the beauty of all those things that are reborn in spring. Illuminated bare dirt, fertile ground inviting seeds yet to be planted.

I hear myself screaming inside, I scare myself. I miss you.

I lay my pen down. I have to plant a garden. I'm going to leave the house sounds to hear birds singing and smell this mother’s morning in May. I'm going to pick up a handful of dirt with my bare hands and sift it between my fingers watching it fall back to the ground. I will pick a leaf of sage, oregano, thyme and put them in my mouth. It will taste like Thanksgiving. I will look back into my house and see the table, the computer, the open Journal, the pen, the empty chair.

Later when the sun is setting I will sit in my chair again, a warm cup of Starfire Licorice tea in front of me, look back on my garden and wait for things to grow.

Mother's Day

May 5, 2011

             Dear Andrea,

            “Are you going to call in crazy this morning?” Steve asks me as he empties the dishwasher.  I stand at the sliding glass door, looking out at my backyard.  I am getting ready to sit down and write.  I am contemplating ways to describe the new green leaves, the red and yellow zinnias, the heirloom tomato plants waiting to be planted. 

            I turn around and look at him.  “No crazy this morning.  At least not yet.”  I answer.

            For the last two days my brain has been like the hummingbirds that come to visit my garden.  It darts here and there, hovers for a moment at some sweet thought, searches for bright shiny things.  I can’t keep up.  All those wings beating create a blur--their humming blocks out the sound of everything. 

            Mother’s Day is Sunday.  I dread it.  This was always our day.  A day you always found a way to make special.  I could not count on my husband to.  Dean would tell me, “You aren’t my mother.”  Never mind I was stepmother to his boys.  His boys I never hear from now. 
           Your sister almost never calls me.

           Though I know you might not understand the import of this fully--and I felt like if I tried to explain this you while you were alive, it would seem like I was trying to make excuses for some perceived shortfall (yours or mine)--I was a mother without a mom.  No one to talk about colic, when to introduce solid foods, how to potty train.  Everything I learned came by trial and error—or I read about it in Parent’s magazine while sitting in the pediatrician’s office waiting to be called into an examination room for your checkups and immunizations.  

           When I was eight, my own mother told me she was going shopping, dropped us off at an aunt’s and never came back.  My stepmother made Cinderella’s look like Donna Reed.  I am not sure what I was to her, but I never was a child.  And though hate is a strong word, I am pretty sure she hated me. 

            In my mid twenties, when you were born, I was not yet far enough removed from my own childhood to escape its influence.  I had been traumatized, and traumas never leave you.  In fact, at some level, they always define you.  No matter who you become.  I have just gotten really good at covering.     
            I tried to be the mother I never had, and fantasized about when I was a little girl and built castles out of spare lumber and cardboard for my imaginary children.  I know I was not a perfect mother.  I know there is no such thing. For all the things I never had a chance to say that I was sorry for—I am sorry.

            For all those times I never took the time to tell you how much I love you—I hope you knew and now know just how much. I will always love you. 

            On Sunday, Mother’s Day, I am going to join Lisa and her family at their church where Annalise will be blessed.  She is three months old now.  Yesterday I went to the storage unit where there are boxes with your handwriting, things you were saving for later.  I searched for the white knit blanket you were wrapped in when you were baptized.  I want to offer it to Lisa to wrap Annalise in when she is blessed.  I could not find it.  Instead I found the Cabbage Patch Doll I made you for your second Christmas.  I could not afford to buy a real one.  She is wearing a nightgown you wore as a baby.  I sat it gently in the front seat of the car.  Closed the metal pull down door.  Put the lock through the narrow opening in the latch.  When I got behing the steering wheel I buckled my seatbelt and closed my eyes.

            You appeared, riding your Wonder Horse in front of the dining room.  You had a pair of bright pink footed blanket pajamas on.  Your hair was dark and wild and curly.  In your arm was the Cabbage Patch doll.  You were taking her for a ride.  You were laughing.

            You did know.  You knew I was your mother and I loved you.

                                                                                           My heart is always looking for you,
                                                                                           Mom