Paradise

May 22, 2011

Hey Andrea,

Still here on planet earth and checking in.  Harold Camping prophesied May 21, 2011, yesterday, was going to be the Apocalypse.  200 million people were going to vanish suddenly from the face of the earth.  They were the chose ones.  They would be spared the thundering hooves of thousands of white horses, the earth turned to a smoking pile of rubble.  I wasn’t quite sure of this 89 year old Rapture prophet and his mathematical scientific approach to the text in Revelations.  He claimed to have science and mathematics behind him.  Who can question science?  Though, science questions spirituality all the time.  Anyway, when I got dressed in the morning, I made sure I put on clean underwear.  It never hurts to be prepared.

He and his wife are hiding out in motel somewhere as I write this.  Mr. Camping claims he miscalculated.  Really the end of the world as we know it will end on October 21, 2011.  But then he predicted the Rapture in 1994.   

I am back in school.  This is my second quarter.  My dad makes fun of me for being a “Greener” now.  He doesn’t say much more than that to me, though I know he wants to.  He thinks this is a hippy school.  Evergreen has a reputation.  It is not deserved.  I have learned more in two classes here than I learned at the UW and at law school in six and a half years.  My younger classmates have a passion for learning, and more, they also have a capacity to question.  I think of how much different my life would have been, if I’d had the opportunity to go to college, they have now.

I want to tell them, “Do not waste this.”  I want to hug every one of them and whisper in their ear, “You are the change we need for the future.”  To be with them is invigorating.   I listen to their stories, their music, their poetry.  I am changed by it.  I read to them.  I tell them stories about you.

Struck with the beauty and limitations of this life, writing lets me express those images.  Writing soothes me.  These letters--I feel you with me when I write them.

Yesterday, I went on a field trip.  Ha Ha.  I am 56 years old on Wednesday, and I went with my class to Mt. Rainier.  The instructor let me be the driver--even though she, and my classmates, had some concern I might be Raptured, and there they would be in a runaway van.  That shows how much they know me. 

What ingenious planning on the instructors’ parts!  To take us up to Paradise on the day the world is to end.  I cannot think of a more fitting place to be.

But first, a stop at Longmire.  There were two hikes to choose from—one I was pretty sure would kill me, the other was less challenging than a trip to the mall.  After being in hibernation for the winter, I opted for the easier hike.  With a fully loaded backpack, carrying enough supplies to sustain me for three full days, I set out on the .7 mile hike across from the Longmire Lodge with my hiking poles.  A gray haired couple was just finishing the hike.  I met kids carrying Granola bars, running ahead of their parents, and squealing.  The birds all took flight catching currents carrying them away from the noise.  It was the first hike I have been on since you died. 

Walking on the brown path, carpeted with dead evergreen needles and crushed cedar cones, my feet recalled keeping step with yours on other paths.  We shared a love for water falling over rock and deadfall, shallow streams, river rocks and alpine flowers.  This mountain reminds me how quickly things can change.  Nothing is constant.  Nothing can be taken for granted.  I am left, now, with all your hiking gear.  I cannot find it in myself to part with it.  Today I wore your hiking boots and the wool cap I gave you on our last Christmas together. 

All along the trail, the skunk cabbage raised it startling yellow spathes from a bog.  Its four lobed, yellow bracket, enshrined a greenish yellow fleshy flower stalk. I turned to a classmate and said, “I never knew skunk cabbage was so beautiful.”

“It is.” She said “It just smells bad.”

A fat doe hid on the edge of the meadow.  Stellar jays saw backpacks and stalked us, waited for any sign of food.  I watched a flock of birds I think were quail.  They were far away, it was hard to tell.  It was enough to watch them.  I did not need to name them.

I saw a stump, lying by a stream, with room enough for two to sit.  I sat.  I listened.  The falling water muted everything.  I closed my eyes until there was just the sound, the sense of being, and a memory of you and me, sharing a peanut butter and jelly sandwich and sips of water from a Nalgene bottle.  We did not need to speak.  In the stream music, in the cool wet air we breathed together, we connected.  Your cells coded by mine.   A mother and her child.

After the hike, we all drove up the mountain to Paradise.  A convention of ghosts revealed them selves halfway up, descending on the mountain.  Through the crowd of them, visibility was negligible.  I drove like a ninety-eight year old woman too short to find the gas pedal.  Even I finally said, “Oh my Gosh. Are we there yet?” (And I did say gosh, not God, out of respect for religious classmates and frankly, I was not still quite sure of the whole Rapture thing.)

My classmates were sweet.  Someone said, “I am glad we have a careful driver.”

At the top, the only view was the 15 foot wall of snow leading to the lodge.  Four feet in front of me my classmates vanished into the fog.  It was other worldly.  Alongside me, practicing mountaineers scaled the wall, tethered to ropes, their packs hanging behind them. 

Entering the lodge, the popping orange yellow flame filled fireplace in the lobby had great visibility.  It was warm.  People sat in chairs reading books, or doing nothing.  Groups sat at three out of the five great, slab of timber tables playing cribbage or scrabble.  One group brought out crackers, grapes, apples, cheeses and dips, from a Metropolitan Market shopping bag.  Everyone spoke in hushed tones, respecting the majesty of the timbered interior.  I visited the gift shop, then, settled in with my thermos of coffee, a peanut butter apple, a notebook and a pen.  I wrote nothing. 

I passed the time and filled myself with Paradise for later, when I could be by myself looking out into my backyard watching for Goldfinches and the quail couple.   Later, unlocking the van, I saw my classmates watching something.  Nobody moved.  I walked up behind them.  “What is it?” I half whispered. 

One of the girls pointed, “I think it is a fox.” 

Three of the girls had cameras, and took pictures of the fox sitting in front of the wall of snow, in a corner of the parking lot.  And they were all trying to get closer.  The fox just sat there, ears perked up, watching as the group approached.

“Careful.” Someone said.  “We do not want him to feel trapped.”

We froze.  The fox sat there, unblinking.  Then it stood, walked parallel to us, never took his eyes and ears away from us.  I turned the camera on my phone on and took a picture.  I wanted to send it to you.  You are not on the contact list, though, on this new Droid phone I got last October. 

I have never seen a fox before.  Though, this was a red fox, it was black and had silver tips on its fur.  It had a long bushy black tail.  It looked hungry and confused.   I wanted to give it one of my granola bars, hold it, pet it.  I have learned, you cannot interfere with nature.  This was the foxes home, I was the guest.  It was forgetting how to feed itself.  Despite the signs all over the park, people still feed the animals. 

As I sat in the lodge at Paradise, a thick blanket of fog blocking my view of everything outside, I am forced to turn my attention to what is inside.  Inside these walls, inside of me.  I think of all my friends I have met in the last year.  Todd, Ami and her daughter Sahara, Steve and his daughter Steffie, AJ and his daughter Suzi.  I think of my sisters, Linda and Karen who are more than sisters.  I think of my niece Lisa, her daughters Annalise and Alicia.  I think of my friend JoAnn and her daughter Edwina.  Of my midwife friend Laura and her children and grandchildren.  Of Nolana and her children.  I am a teacher even when I am not aware I am teaching.  In your absence, I am becoming an elder woman.  I want to be elegant in that role.  I want to be fearless.

And my classmates, I want to tell these other mother’s children, follow your heart, be fearless, believe in yourself.  But most of all, I want for them to know they can.  They are the change our world needs.  It all starts with one person, one idea and the courage pursue it.  And a day on a mountain.

You, Andrea, were a woman of great courage.  I do not think I told you enough, how much I admired you.  As I sat on the log by the stream across from the lodge at Longmire remembering you I gave thanks for you. 
   

                                                                    Love You,

                                                                    Mom  

Exiting

May 21, 2011

Dear Andrea, 

“Major anxiety attack. Stopping to catch breath.”  I text Steve. I am on my way back to Olympia from Tacoma.

Gray clouds are rolling in, banking from the Southwest. It will rain soon. It is almost noon.

I have hummingbird brain again.

I stop at the Starbucks at Barksdale Station.  At Barksdale Station there is also a Subway, Happy Teriyaki, dental office, a chiropractor and the Better Business Bureau. All of this is across I-5 from the south entrance to Fort Lewis.  

If I had turned left, instead of right, when I took this exit off the freeway, I would have driven onto the base.  There, I could find the house I spent most of my childhood in on Idaho Street.  I do not have time for that today.  I do not have the energy.

The school I attended from seventh grade to eleventh sat on this very spot Barksdale Station sits on now. As I look out the window from where I sit, I think about the girls I shared study hall with every morning for 4 ½ years—Donna, Sharon, Roberta.  I wonder what they are doing now. I remember the summer I rode in the parade through the streets of DuPont waving from the back of a convertible. I was a Pow Wow Princess. That weekend I danced in the streets, I almost drowned in a swimming pool, and my sister told on me for something I can't remember. I do remember being pulled out of the bathroom by my hair. The pummeling of fists against my head, my neck, my shoulders, being thrown against the wall, and trying to escape falling down the stairs.

Fort Lewis, Tacoma are the epicenter of my being.  When I am there tectonic plates shift inside me.  Some are driven under.  Others split in half.

Driving for an hour through the streets of Tacoma this morning, I took a tour of my youth and young adulthood.  These are things I never talked about with you.  I wanted your childhood to be free of the influence of mine. 

The house on North 42nd and Ferdinand, Holy Cross School, and church where I attended grade school to the fifth grade, made my first confession, and received my first communion--where I walked home from school thinking “if Jesus could endure the cross I could survive the beatings with the belt”--wishing I were Huckleberry Finn, that I could make a home for myself in the two block vacant lot wild with alder trees.

Past Sixth Avenue splitting the well kept historic North End from the working class South Neighborhoods.  Past Remann Hall, I took a taxi there three weeks before Christmas in 1970. It was either that or suicide. Sixteen years old, covered in bruises, I was strip searched, given prison garb, and deloused. Then put in solitary confinement for a week where I howled and cried until I could barely open my eyes as Bye Bye Miss American Pie played over and over through the stereo speaker in the ceiling until I was ready to drown myself in the metal toilet in the middle of the room. I ate from a metal tray passed through a metal slot in the door.  I was my only company.  My crime was that I could not take the beatings anymore--I ran away from home.

On a snowy night between Christmas and the New Year, my caseworker drove me through the dark snowy streets lit by the orange glow of street lamps down Sixth Avenue, onto Highway 18, Interstate 5 exiting on South 56th St. The final destination was St. Ann’s, a Catholic Children's Home on Alaska Street between South 56th and South 72nd.  The back of the property was the freeway.  In the front of the property was Wapato Lake and Wapato Park. I shared a room with a girl my age who had been a prostitute, and who had a baby that was killed by her boyfriend. I was safer there. 

Steve texts me back. “Bummer. No Sadie to help. Close eyes and focus on breath. Start at those and work your way up slowly making sure every muscle along the way is relaxed.”

I text back.  “Lorazepam. It will kick in soon.”

In the meantime I sit here and drink coffee. It is not safe for me to drive. I take every exit absent mindedly. I cannot keep track of where I am in any given moment.

For now, I continue to sit in this Starbucks in this leather overstuffed chair sipping a grande soy, 3 pumps of sugar free hazelnut syrup, with no foam latte. I will let my memories take me where they will until they find an exit and I feel safe enough to drive again.

From St. Ann’s Home I moved to a foster home by the University of Puget Sound, back to the North End. I stayed there until the day I graduated from high school one year later. The night of graduation I packed my clothes, John Denver albums, and my record player. The next morning I moved into an apartment three blocks from there.  It took three trips on foot to move all my possessions.  

The apartment was behind the Dairy Queen that fronted Sixth Avenue. The only furniture was a wooden chair, a table, and a brown sofa the former tenants left behind. I was happy there eating Top Ramen and scrambled eggs. The bus stop was just a block away, though I seldom had the change to take it. Just 18, I often hitchhiked to my job downtown at Woolworth's in the ladies’ underwear department where I tidied up the lacy panty displays.   I wanted to go to college then.  I had no idea how to make that happen.

Within six months I was married to a man I barely knew. After we were introduced, he showed up on my doorstep at my little apartment carrying bouquets of sweet peas he had stopped to pick between his house and mine.  He had a job, a house, a car. That fall I moved into his home on South 54th and Cushman. I sewed my wedding dress of white dotted Swiss while sitting on a portable Singer Sewing machine at his dining room table. I cut it from dotted Swiss using a Simplicity pattern.  John Denver sang Annie’s Song from a cassette player for our wedding.

My husband’s house was six blocks from Bob's Market where I bought Oreos and milk. Two blocks from Gil’s Pizza and Delicatessen where I could buy 12 inch pepperoni pizzas with black olives and extra cheese that I would bake at home. I soothed myself with food and hated myself as I outgrew each pair of pants. My husband only worked sporadically, then I had your sister to feed and clothe. We moved onto 5 acres we rented on Fox Island. I got chickens and a cow and planted a garden. When even the cow was starving I packed up what I could, took $10 in rolled pennies I'd been saving, your three year old sister and moved out. I was pregnant again, though I did not know it then. One month later, I had a miscarriage.  There was seven years behind me. 

I left Fox Island then and moved to Kent.  Thus started the years I filled out welfare forms, and paid for groceries with food stamps while the people in line behind me and the grocery clerk monitored the contents of my basket. Those were the years I stood in line at the food bank thinking there had to be a better life. Those were the years Mt. St. Helens erupted, and you were born. Thinking I had nowhere else to turn, finding dead ends everywhere, trying to find schooling – secretarial, fashion merchandising, searching for a way to get ahead. I spent eight years on welfare and tried every program they offered me until I finally came up with one of my own.

I applied to the University of Washington. I knew education would be my salvation and hopefully, yours. It was.

With no college credits behind me I finished at the University of Washington in 3 1/2 years.  I feared someone would find me there—tell me I did not belong. I sat in the back of a lecture hall with you in your stroller because I could not afford daycare. You learned how to sit quietly and entertain yourself with crayons, puzzles, Legos, and children’s brightly illustrated books. On days it was not raining, I took you out of the stroller and let you run through the lawns on campus, pick roses from the carefully pruned and tended gardens. 

Graduating in the top 10% of my class I was encouraged to apply to Harvard Law School. Thinking, why not? You'll never know unless you try, I applied. The first sentence of the essay I sent in with my application read “I am a single mother on welfare.”  I waited for an answer. 

While you were watching Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles one Saturday morning in January 1987 the letter came from Harvard.  The postman pushed it into the mail slot in our front door with the weekly grocery flyers and the Puget Power bill where it then dropped onto the entry way floor.  There it lay until I padded over in my robe and slippers and picked it up.  My hands shook feeling the weight of the envelope, its contents yet unrevealed.  I found an opening for my index finger under the front flap, tore it open, unfolded the letter.

“You’ve been accepted to the Class of 1990.”

I miss those years taking you to class with me, first in a stroller at the University of Washington, then walking with your hand in mine through Harvard Square to class at the law school. You were a part of the class of 1990. At graduation you and your sister wore caps and tassels like mine, you walked across the podium. “Sherry Parsons Clark and her two daughters.” The announcer said as the Dean handed me my degree.  You put your hand in mine and smiled as we walked down the steps of Langdell Hall and the library.

The week after graduation we packed our couch, bed, clothing, toys in a 17 foot U-Haul truck. You and your sister sat on the bench seat beside me. The pet hamster sat on your sister's lap. On the drive home from Cambridge to Tacoma we stopped at Niagara Falls, Chicago, Wall Drug, Mount Rushmore, Bear Country. Climbing up over Snoqualmie Pass on I-90 from the flat irrigated farmlands of Eastern Washington then dropping back down to the lush forests at North Bend, Tiger Mountain on the other side I started to sing.  My heart was full.  You and your sister sang with me.  We were home again.  Trees that pierced the sky like arrows, falling water over rock alongside I-90, the last remnants of winter white clinging to the shoulders and the hilltops. Reaching Tacoma we pulled up to our new home at 6118 S. G Street. It was the first house I ever purchased on my own.  This would be our home.

I tried to settle in there.  I was restless in my new role of Harvard Law School graduate, lawyer.  Til then, I had been poor and powerless.  There was a lot to overcome.  I became a great actress—improvising that new life as it unfolded before me.  Terror had brought its own U-Haul—had taken up residence inside of me.  I believed peace could only be found outside of me. 

For 10 years I was single. On my own, I provided for you and your sister with no help from either of your fathers.  Harvard came with a big price tag.  There is no such thing as a free ride.  Student loans were coming due.  And though I recently graduated from Harvard Law School, I felt like I was nothing without a husband.  I didn’t really want to be a lawyer.  I wanted to be a wife and mother.  I only went to school because I needed to be able to support myself—and you and your sister. 

We lived in that house on G St. that I loved at first sight for less than a year.  Then I married Dean.  We moved to his home in Federal Way.
.

“I am okay now.” I text Steve.

I am lying. I do not want him to worry. I am lost in the rooms of our house I bought for us in Tacoma. The swing on the front porch, the front yard neatly tended. The three bedrooms upstairs, mine in the middle of yours and your sister's. Your space faced the street and had a little room under the eaves with bookshelves and a child sized table with two chairs. It was a place an imagination could run wild, where magic could happen at tea parties with a cabbage patch doll and a stuffed rabbit and your mother reading you a story.

My favorite place in that house was the sunroom downstairs. It looked out onto the mountain ash in the backyard. I put my office there, the desk in front of the windows, thinking I would write great stories and poetry in that space I created for myself.  I wrote nothing. 

I drove by the G Street house today. I parked on the street across from it. There is a chain-link fence where white picket used to be. The front porch swing hangs tilted from one rusted chain. The yard, the flowering quince I planted in the corner, is overgrown. There is moss on the roof. There are no curtains on the room that used to be yours. A sheet is carelessly tacked up there. I drove around to the back to see the mountain ash, the sunroom that I loved. The mountain ash is gone. The sunroom looks out on a dilapidated garage, a chain-link dog kennel, and an overgrown backyard.  Everything has changed.  There is no going back.

Everywhere in this town there are memories. Red Lobster, Red Robin, Dairy Queen, Safeway, Tacoma Mall, Fugate Ford, Point Defiance, the ferry to Vashon Island. Too many places to name that we have shared.   I am spent.

And the clouds have moved on. I can see blue sky. I have finished my latte.

I can drive again now.
                                                                                     Love you,
                                                                                     Mom

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.