Gifts of the Pandemic...

 

Leon tells me this man has a house close by and a sister far away....

It's hard to believe, but I do believe him. He's seen everything.

This is the most amazing soup kitchen I've ever been to and as of late I've been to quite a few, certainly more then I ever could have imagined.

I went back to work amist the Covid chaos and the tremendous need for nurses.  I felt guilty not returning to a profession I'd spent so much time preparing for, especially when the need was so great, but the truth was - I hadn't worked in a long time, not as a traditional nurse and I was, quite frankly, scared to death that I'd accidentally kill someone.   

It all came rolling back to me; like riding a bicycle, or maybe more like riding a bicycle up hill in a rainstorm, over stones, barefoot.  But it came back and here I was in the middle of a city, in a church built in the 1800s, surrounded by homelessness and strife, talking to my new friend Leon who worked here.  

I'd applied for a job with the county where I live.  Months later they called me about a different position.  I gave it a shot.  Literally.  I became a vaccination nurse, part of a small group of nurses and medical assistants who brought the vaccine out to the streets, to those who'd weren't able to go and get it for themselves.  Not that I'm a strict vax-er... many of my coworkers were unvaccinated, but this was about equity and accessibility to all people, no matter their circumstance.  Seems like it might be an easy thing to do, yet I found that it was anything but.   Not easy to do, not easy to deliver on, not easy to rationalize, not easy to talk about even with friends and family, not easy on my poor feet, my mind and more then anything - not easy on my breaking heart.  You think you've seen a thing or two when you get to be my age, but boy oh boy, was I ever wrong. 

Leon says, "Schizophrenia and street drugs...", then Leon says nothing and I don't either.  Three weeks ago the man we were refering to had sat at my table, drinking a Snapple and eating BBQ chips.  Some of my coworkers and I had begun to loot the plethora of snacks that sat piled high in a storage room at the county headquarters, meant to keep the mass vax workers happy.  We'd fill our cooler with sugary drinks; cokes and teas and gatoraid.  Chocolate went quickly on the street and in the jails and so did savory things.  No one wants a granola bar or fruit snacks.  When at the kitchen, I'd take a shopping bag full each day and walk for blocks, handing them out to anyone who'd accept them, trying to make sure to reach even the least reachable.  This job had become more about the people and far less about the vaccine.

He was usually alseep, but I'd place a drink and a snack beside his shopping cart.  Then one day he approached me and we spoke.  He was articulate and clearly clever.  Talking with him was easy and listening even easier.  He'd shaved, I might not have recognized but for his trusty, highly piled shopping cart.  He had a warm smile, strong voice and used words that made me think.  He smelled like mothballs, but that was far more pleasant then his usual urine soaked odor.  I gave him the vaccination he asked for and he stayed beside me, talking and talking, under the tent, at the table with all the information pamphlets and the "I got my shot" stickers.  He took one of each before he left.  He was the only person I vaccinated that day and I considered it a victory.  This was what I was here for afterall, to reach the unreachable.  It was a good day.

I looked for him the next time I worked at that kitchen

and the next and the next.

and then one day I finally saw him again...

I left him the same Snapple I'd given him the day we spoke and a pack of peanutbutter crackers.  I put it on top of his  overflowing shopping cart, quietly and carefully.  I waited a while.  I longed to ask him how he was, but he was sleeping, more then sleeping, he was practically unconscious.  I surveyed his cart and deep down beneath many other things, I saw the sticker and the pamphlet he'd taken, stored like the other things he seemed to value. 

There were these gifts that came from the pandemic, I'm sure you know what I mean, but for me, they were things like; more time with my kids at our house, less shopping and dining out, more finishing up home improvement projects, less socializing, and then this job opportunity and the ensuing friendships that formed at work - many other things, but none so precious as my experience on the streets and in the shelters, with the homeless, the homebound, with addicts, in prisons and with those so lost they might never be found.  I'd gone to places I'd never have gone before and likely never will again.  I'd gotten past a fear I would have never, ever attemtped to, not ever.  I was honestly so afraid of so many different people, but I learned that you never know who someone really is, not until you get close enough to see their halo...

The Orchid Keepers...

I made a mad dash out of California, like it was on fire, and it so often is...

We pulled away from the empty house at three pm on a Friday, just 24 hours after my daughter graduated high school.

I left in a panic, as if that non existent fire was chasing me from the cool, sparkling coast, deep into the smoldering desert of Nevada.  My hands ached that night from the tight grip I kept on the wheel, believing my strangle hold could make the SUV move faster or straighter.  

And we were all over tired from months of preparation and anticipation, desperate to move forward and to change our splintered life... 

The first night was hard, but not as hard as the ones that followed.  

I'd wanted to make the trip across country a sort of vacation, but running away doesn't make for a very good vacation, I was about to learn.

Each day we'd get out of the car, release some energy on something.  We'd hike, walk and not talk, because talk led to tiny quarrels that didn't dissipate.  

We'd eat, but not dine.  We'd all developed some kind of vehicular anorexia that kept us from consuming the multitude of packaged snacks stowed inside the car.

We'd encourage the dog to run, but she'd not stray far from our sides, often choosing to wind herself around us, tangle us up in her leash.   She acted confused, which likely she was, we all were.  

We were leaving California, the only home my children knew, to move 3,000 miles away to our next home, our future, a place far away from the life we loved which had disappointed us.  

We three were ready to move on, but not because we wanted to, more like because we needed to and need is the mother of invention, not the mother of excitement, after all.   

So we drove long days, listening to music, daydreaming of our future and the possibilities it held as we mentally sifted the good past from the bad past, tossing the painful, rotten parts out the window, letting them litter the miles behind us, trying to lighten the load we carried across the country.  

As we drove, she never let it go.  She held it on her knees, clutched between her two hands, like a newborn baby.

She won it months earlier at an author's festival.  It held special meaning to her.  

We debated weather or not to give it away.  We loved it so much and we loved many people we'd be moving away from with the same tenderness but she could not bare to let it go.  I suspect it represented a piece of my sister and step-mother that she simply needed to hold on to.  

Orchids are fragile.  They don't like to be moved but there was little point in mentioning that to her.  It was a fact she'd be well aware of I'm sure and yet it would not be enough of a reason for her to part with it.  It was much more then a plant to her.

A month after we arrived, every precious, perfect petal fell off of her orchid.  

For a year it's remained alive but dormant.

I re-potted it, relocated it, refused to allow myself to dump it in the trash, sad as it's condition has appeared to be.

And today, I see the blooms or at least the potential of them...

Just barely there, but there non the less

"Patience and diligence, like faith, remove mountains... " William Penn 

We moved though many mountains, valleys, deserts, across prairies, past lakes, over rivers, into cities and small towns, till we reached our new home.  

Spent and trembling each night, I'd sneak our pet tortoise and snake into a hotel room, past an unsuspecting desk clerk.  I'd set up their light installations, walk the dog and scrounge up some semblance of a healthy dinner for my kids, which would require serious cajoling to get them to eat.  

We'd sleep restlessly, despite our deep fatigue, reluctantly repacking the car with critters and crap each morning for six long days till we reached our destination.  

Though we are here and have been for one full year, we haven't quite made it to our destination just yet, but we're closer, closer then ever...

We are here.
We live here now.
And the Orchid is starting to bloom.

the ten month flu...

Sometimes there is nothing like a flu to make you well...

Last Spring I reluctantly fixed a broken bone that hid itself inside my body.  The Orthopedist laughed when I told him I had no real idea how it came to be that I had a fracture in the ball joint of my hip at the age of 53.  I vaguely recall being bumped in the whole general "hippal" region by a Hyundai, with a hurried, unhappy, tiny, little man, who's head was so small that his ball cap looked like a helmet, backing up in a Walmart parking lot  - which somehow felt like my just desserts for being in that horrible spot to start with.  I also recalled hurling my own body out of the icy lake on many occasions, slamming it like a flopping fish onto my waiting, solid surfaced, blue kayak, after having dove off it, then gone swimming with my children on many hot summer days.  It would be more likely then not that I'd at least break something doing that unnatural and ugly task, including damaging the poor kayak itself.  But I couldn't say how it happened and I'd ask myself over and over, why it had to happen, but it just did.  And it seemed to be for no reason...

My favorite Poet, Mary Oliver, died recently and I cried over the loss as if she were my closest friend; most faithful pet, doting Auntie, coveted old flame, darling companion and in some ways, she was all of those things to me.  She moved me to tears with her intelligence and sensitivity, her charming ruggedness and love for all things natural.  She somehow, with her words and wisdom imparted to me that I was, in fact, a forgiveable human being and there is no one else, not even our sweet lord Jesus, who has ever gotten that notion to take solid root inside of me.  She made me want to write more, because I took in how it fueled her so.  And her writing fueled me so.  She was an inspiration of the purest kind.  I loved everything she wrote and there is not another single Author I can say that about.  Everything she did was my favorite.  She was perfect and she died and I cried for her.  Not for her dying, because she let me know in her writing that death did not disturb, yet enchanted her.  I cried for myself, because I felt a rare and perfect love for another human that had never and would never be dulled or damaged, as most loves become, even our best loves will be.   If I believed in coincidences, I'd say that I coincidentally came down with the flu when she passed away, leaving us behind in this beautiful world she described like no other ever could, but I know better then that.  My flu symptoms began the day my Orthopedist told me I needed "a total hip replacement kinda like yesterday" and the flu itself lasted about ten months and ended about two days ago.  AND I HAVEN'T FELT THIS WELL IN WAY TOO LONG.   

"Someone I loved once gave me a box full of darkness.  It took me years to understand that this too, was a gift".  Mary Oliver

As I read many of Mary's works this past week, I was, as always, struck by things she said and instantly, like a tightly closed oyster, shucked from it's shell, untrapped, wide open to all possibilities, full of comprehension and knowledge about myself and "my place in the family of things", I began to understand that my bad fortune involving the broken bone, the unpleasantness and complications that came up in my personal health as a result of that surgery, the death of my much loved father and the gaping hole he's left in my life, coupled with every single choice I made for my family and the predicament we've found ourselves in, simultaneously over the past ten months, were all bits and pieces, dimensions and layers in my box of darkness and that all these things, these challenging, heartbreakingly complex and painful things, have now, with time, revealed themselves to me as gifts. 

And so today, in honor of my favorite poet, and because I would not wish to spite her, I accept my gifts, my box of darkness gifts and I just open myself up to myself, to my accountability.  One of the curses which comes from the blessing of knowing something is, that you can't unknow it. 

"Instructions for living a life.
Pay attention
Be astonished
Tell about it"    

Mary Oliver



As much as I haven't felt like much of a writer much lately... (much) It's who I am and despite not doing it much, it's what I do and... I love it along with all the other embarrassing truths about myself.   Thank you Mary Oliver for always waking me up to myself and for reminding "what it is I plan to do, with my one and only, wild and precious life".

wings and prayers

In this era of new hips and sadly deflating lips

On again trouble with my ex and an unwanted turkey neck

Forced into accepting the aging of my darling folks, 
while I myself need to cut back on egg yolks...

I realize that the only way to get anywhere I want to go, 

is to sometimes put the cart intentionally before the horse.  Change is hard, even though I wholeheartedly believe that this change is good and necessary, it's not easy.

While I work toward and through my hard changes, I've found myself mired in sadness and an uncomfortablilty that these alterations bring out in me and I question the changes.  I mean after all, who will I be without the things that have defined me as who I am?  Things like the fiddly old lake house with adjacent deep, blue, freezing cold lake, my So Cal address, the people I love to spend my days with and the label I've slapped on myself for conservative bohemianism?  

And who's daughter do I become one day without each of my parents perpetually "there" for me?   All these things, the way things are and the people who love me, aren't they what makes me ME?  So if things really change, for worse and for better, will I still be myself?

So I say my prayers like a little girl, which is the wisest thing I do and I ask for signs that I'm making the right changes.

I pray for strength and for peace through choices I make, which is a tall order even for the Lord above.  And he answers my prayers in the strangest ways, by sending down angels to bring me comfort and joy, healthy distraction, laughter, awe and lots of poop...

If I had not driven the long winding road to the lake house that particular day, at that particular time

And if you had not fallen to the earth precisely then, making your way to my door and waited patiently, pooping everywhere, till I arrived,

Then I would not have found you

"Angel flying to close to the ground"

Beautiful distraction, wounded bird, something wild and strange in need of love, care and a temporary haven.

They are so smart, these wild winged things

They understand change and they adapt quickly

They recognize good intentions and communicate their needs

They learn to trust those who earn it

They find ways to talk 

They figure out how to walk, even with a broken leg

They make you feel alive by eating from the palm of your trembling hand 

and your rapid heartbeat is one derived from the thrill of wildness choosing YOU and not one born of stress and strain

They distract you from all that depletes you

They make you laugh and leave you in awe

"And I fixed up your broken wing, hung around awhile, trying to keep your spirits up and your fever down"

While I healed and nourished you, you healed and nourished me.  Proving to me in the most subtle and sweetest ways that I'd still be me even without the trappings I believed defined me.

"I knew someday that you would fly away, for love is the greatest healer to be found"

And because of beautiful you, I see with my own eyes and feel with my own heart that no matter who is with me, those I love never really go away because my love for everything and everyone lives inside of me, it won't fade if I won't let it

 and that is who I am.

"If you had not have fallen and I had not have found you, angel flying to close to the ground...

Fly on past the speed of sound, I'd rather see you up, then see you down

Leave me if you need to, I will still remember

my angel flying to close to the ground"

Thank you wild and beautiful thing for reminding me who I am.  

I love you all the way to the stars 

This too shall pass...

Gifts my mother gave to me...

A tape recorder.   
I told her I wanted to be a writer before I could actually write and she gave me a tape recorder to tell my stories to.
A fur coat.
Political incorrectness aside, she gave me the one thing I was certain she never would - and I still have it hanging in my closet today 40 years later - the perfect bunny fur coat.
A white gown.
I didn't want any of the dresses on any of the racks in any of the stores and so she made me a white, silky, simple, elegant gown to wear to the prom with my senior boyfriend when I was a finicky freshman.
Hope.
"This too shall pass", she always said and those words still roam inside my head... until things pass and they always do, just like she promised.
A reason to change.
Of all the things my mother has given me, she gave me a reason to try to grow myself into the kind of person she is.  I may never come close to being anything like her, but I'll always aspire to be half as wonderful.

If I had just one word to describe her, what would it be?

I've thought long and hard to figure out that ONE word...

Honest.

Out of all the beautiful, marvelous, groundbreaking, accomplishments my incredible mother has achieved in her 80 year existence, I have to admit that nothing is more stunning then her pure, innate, steadfast honesty.  

She is my go to person, my touchstone, my past, present and welcoming future
She is my dearest friend, my lifeboat, life coach and butter-rum life saver    
She is fish Friday and band-aids
She is John Denver music on a Sunday morning
She is a County Squire and Autumn leaves
She is brussel sprouts and home made quilts
She is candle light and campgrounds
She is the original "Material Girl", but never materialistic
She is ahead of her time, every moment of her precious and much admired life
She is Mary Tyler Moore meets Shirley Partridge
She is licorice bits and sewing kits
She is blue lakes and baking cakes
She's must go meals and high heels
She's mugs of tea and home to me
She is planet earth and the stars above
She is everything in this world I love

Happy 80th Birthday to my beautiful mother; a perfect, complex, elegant, shinning bridge over sometimes troubled water.

\

every time I think of you...

We've had this crazy wind that picked up around 3 am and my eyes are tearing up.  There's all this silty grit in the air.  

I'm righting fallen umbrellas, shoving uprooted cornstalks back into disinterested, dried out soil, salvaging the wind-torn garden.  Next I'll dive in the pool and drag out the mess of palm prongs floating like dead men over the now placid, blue surface.

We get these Santa Ana winds blowing from our deserts every now and again.

I wipe my teary eyes and she walks away from me.

Why do I feel so emotional about my daughter?  

Why is she the ticket to my insides?

What did I do to deserve her and all the hardships, guilt-trips, sleepless nights of worry and hours of blessed wonder, why me with all these gifts hidden beneath tiny disasters which she's brought into my life?

I remember when she was four years old and her pre-school teacher told me that something was wrong with her.

Every ounce of me wished that woman ill.  

Denial is a lovely and powerful thing.

Then later when others proved there was something wrong with her, I took it upon myself to prove there was something right with everything about her.

I won.

All I have to do is look at her and my eyes feel as though the Santa Ana winds are kicking up.

Everything she does, she does well or not at all.

And there are plenty of "not at alls".  

She's no joiner, my daughter.

The idea of changing out of clothes and into a swimsuit was enough to make her nearly skip taking the place she earned on the high school swim team.

But she worked beyond nudity and the rest of it.

Now she walks from her solitary space on the bleachers at swim meets to the platform she jumps from with relative ease, or so one would think, but I know better or maybe only I know her period.

There is no relative ease about her life.

"Who is that kid?", one coach asks the other.   "I don't know, but she's killing it".

'She's my little girl', I want to say, but like her, I find myself quiet...

Every sentence she speaks in public is an effort.

Every fragile friendship she makes will eventually evaporate, like the blue water in our dead man pool, after a Santa Ana windstorm.

I remember the first moment I was certain I mattered to her.  

I'd gone away over night, semi reluctantly and she'd stayed with my mother.

In the morning, I walked into my mother's pine paneled living room to find my daughter, in purple corduroy overalls, watching out the window instead of watching Elmo on TV.   She turned to look at me and came to hug me, repeatedly.  I held her in my arms and she'd bury her face in my neck then pull back to look at me, bury her face, pull back.  Not long after she said, "the mommy person came back..."

I was delightedly offended, moved and appalled.  

Even when she was inside of me, she felt like a separate entity and I can rarely get close enough.

Yet, I get so emotional - over her... 

She goes to Saturday school to raise her steady A to an A plus.

She doesn't need a "talking to" ever.

She needs someone to talk to, but they don't exist.  

I do though.

And I won.

She talks to me and I listen as hard as I can.

And I'd listen forever, because whatever I don't have or can't find is nothing compared to what I was given.

It's a long road, raising a daughter on your own is, but raising a daughter with Asperger's is a different road.  It's a trip...

It's a long and lonely and exhausting avenue, which leads to an open road, if you stay on it long enough.

Recently we moved.

I have 93 pairs of various footwear.

I counted.

93 pair of shoes.  

I'm sorry.

I'm greedy.

She has 6 pair of shoes and three of them are converse.  Two high tops.

She only can handle six pair of shoes.

Seven makes zero sense to her.

Everything she does is beautiful, to me.

Everything I take in, moves me to tears, when it involves her.

I get so emotional.

When I was in labor with her, I was expecting a boy, a big boy

but when she finally appeared, the doctor said,

"you have a little girl, I mean a really little girl."

5 lbs 13 oz

I get so emotional.

Thank heaven for little, little girls.

...Away

As if it were yesterday, I can still see him.  My family would be driving along the winding, tree-lined, two lane road toward town.  From the backseat of my mother's often crowded station wagon, I'd crane my neck, elongate and contort myself, to look beyond my brothers and sisters hoping to catch a glimpse of the shaggy, red and white Paint pony, grazing lonely in the long, narrow paddock, with the small red barn behind him.  Years later, the man who owned that property became a friend of ours.  I'd go over to visit, steal away to the now empty arena, with it's pony-less stable.  Once I dared to step inside, where I found a cobweb covered saddle set upon a saw horse in a long abandoned stall.  With my hand I scrubbed away the dust, revealing, smooth, rich leather.  Using the sleeve of my sweatshirt, I shined silver clasps and buckles.  It was enough for me to slide my leg over, straddle this remarkable prize and pretend the pony was alive and moving beneath me.  I'd close my eyes and allow a contentedness I'd never known before to wash over me.   I went there again and again, not caring if other children spied on me, alone, lost in my beautiful day dream.   And then one day the opportunity, like the pony was gone.

A few years ago, the contentedness I discovered as a child returned to me... an expected surprise, something I didn't know would happen which felt inevitable; horses entered my life.  

Meant to be.

Absolutely everything changed

yet the alteration was so gentle, so welcomed, so wanted, it caused no disruption what so ever...

And I can hardly recall what our life was like before,

Hours at the stable slowly fly by,

My mind stops whirling whenever I'm inside the barn.  

I'm present, in the moment,  reacting only to whats around me

and maybe that's the beauty of a life with horses, they literally take you away.

There was nothing I didn't love about horse life,

The smell of hay, the thrill of watching my daughter learn to jump on her beloved horse sweet Johnny Cash

The ease with which I lost track of time and my lipstick, the comfort of jeans, a warm jacket, sensible steal toed shoes.

And then one day, more to love... there was a pure naturalness in how my sweet son shifted into cowboy mode, hopping on Whiskey Jim and easily melding into a fine horsemen, just like that.

Meant to be

I'd heard someone say, "beware of red mares"

only to offer me one a day or so later...

I was likely kidding myself when I told my son we'd try her for a few weeks and rationally decide if they made a good match.

He knew straight away that she was his.
He called her Alaska...

Meant to be

Talented and aloof

fast and clever

words I'd use to describe her and yet I could never describe her with words,

words are not enough to describe horses...

Things changed between my children when everything became equal.

Competitiveness crept up and though there were hours of pure bliss, there were also times of disquiet in a place where previously I'd experienced nothing but peace, and still, I loved the life that formed for us with horses, more then any life I'd ever lived.

When we lost our first love, our stunning Running Quarter, a part of me went missing.

I felt very much like a little girl in a barn on a saddle without a pony beneath her.

I kept waiting for the peace, the balance, the dreamy contentedness to return, but it disappeared.  It won't come...

Sad, lost, angry, empty - words I'd use to try to describe this, but words are not enough to describe horses...

And I made a decision not to let anything hurt me this way again

And I decided not to love her the way I did him.

But, "beware the red mare"

I swore I'd never run my hands over her shiny red coat, which was thick and naturally glossy and felt like velvet on my palms.

I'd never sing to her, but you see, she loved the Beatles, especially "Michelle"

...sont des mot qui vont tres bien ensemble, tres bien ensemble....

I would not press my forehead to her long face, with it's snow white blaze and trust her not to shake me off, breaking my nose. 

I wouldn't whisper in her fuzzy ears, my prayers to God, prayers for her to be strong again, live long, heal herself and me.  "Please heal me, Beautiful"

I'd never kiss her soft muzzle, wouldn't feel her warm breath rushing down my neck.

I'll never make a habit out of tangling my fingers in her thick, rough mane, then smell the alfalfa, sunshine, all the outdoors hours later when I absentmindedly run my hands over my chin.

I'd never risk standing directly behind her, resting assured she wouldn't spook and strike me with her powerful legs.

I wouldn't take a thousand photos of her and never stare deeply into her glowing, dark chocolate eyes.

I'd be reasonable

 Keep my distance

I would not fall terribly, horribly, truly in love with her, because I knew better, 
I knew that if anything should happen to her, I'd never recover and I'd never, ever, ever be the same. 

I knew this, because I lost one horse not so long ago; one amazing, irreplaceable, unforgettable, beautiful, remarkable horse, Johnny, and that broke me in two...

And she, Ally, aka Alaska, has broken me in three...

Beware the red mare

Words aren't enough to describe horses...

and so I'll say the only words I know that you'll understand -

I love you

sont des mon qui vont tres bien ensemble...

I won't be the same.  I don't want to, not ever.  I couldn't help but love you Ally.   rip...