wishlist/laundrylist

I am too old for wishes and a wish-list to pin them on.  I should probably be checking off items on a laundry list, instead of lying awake, listening to Pearl Jam, mentally adding to my living dreams, elongating my wish-list.


My step-father disliked it when I used the word "wish".  I often did this decades ago when we first met and became close.  I actually believe though that he is the one who's made the switch toward hopefulness, which to me is the foundation for wishing.   In years past he often told me this and I quote; "put your wish in one hand and s_i_  in the other.   You'll be holding something which amounts to nothing in both palms".


I don't have to wish to understand that now he and I both hold valuable possessions in our own hands.
I wish I was  _ _ _   _ _ _ _ _.
...And I wish I could fall asleep.

where you are

School begins in a few days.   

Where exactly did summer go?

Why is it that something so very planned out feels unexpected once it actually arrives?   

The school start date loomed there all summer long, but now, just 48 hours ahead of us, school beginning feels like the ending of something that was meant to be endless ---summer-.  

I look at him and he at me.  His questions are, for the most part unanswerable in any intelligent way and to anyone else, they'd seem ridiculous, but to me, they are the most important, most weighty queries.   "What will you do all day without me?  Can I bring and then leave my stuffed animal sharks in the car so they can see where I go to school and can be there when I come out again, waiting to see me?  Will the dogs miss me when I'm not here?", He questions. I'm careful with my responses.  I long to baby him and I want to tell him just the right things, select the correct words; words to give him confidence and yet ones which will convey how much I'll miss him each day.

Because while he's away learning to multiply, I will be divided.

Everywhere he goes, I go too, just a piece of me, in his pocket or in the sticky bottom of his backpack, in the knot on his blue Converse, the collar of his shirt. the smudge on his cheek.   

I have attached myself, in just the tiniest but most permanent way, to my little boy and I suppose that it's the closest a female can ever get to being a male.

I'm crazy about my son.  My sun.  

the dark horse

For each time in my life where I spoke without thinking, it seems these days that there are ten times for each of those, maybe more, where I think without speaking.
...And I don't know why.


Sometimes I actually feel as though silence is a better conductor of my internal, almost electric, synaptic responses to external stimulation and the words and actions of those around me.
It's as if I feel as though someone paying close attention should be, could be, hopefully would be able to read me like a book and in me discover what I cannot say, understanding better then I ever might speak with words.


Sometimes the constant reel playing in the theatre of my mind is far too complex and the progression is faster then my thoughts and sounds could convey.
This would follow along well with that old expression I heard a thousand times in my youth, "be seen, not heard".


Once that I can recall easily, I was able to successfully, without words, transfer my thoughts  and absorb another living beings.  The outcome was a series of mutually beneficial actions...  and the story goes like this - - - -
A few years ago, when I began to have time to myself again, I was out at night.  Where I live, there are no street lamps.  The road lies low, weaving tightly between two steep mountains.  On my ride home late through the dark, listening to music I love, I was startled by a returning reflection of my cars headlights.  Something tall and dark loomed in the center of the street a few hundred feet up ahead.    It was pitch black outside and so I decreased my speed, but not by much.   I knew the road like the back of my hand.  The closer I got to whatever it was, the less I understood what it might be.  Not until I passed it, did I realize it was a horse, standing like a statue near the center line.   Seconds later, I spun my car round, pulled to the side and left it running and I walked carefully, with caution in confusion to the big, beautiful animal.  


When I was within inches of it, no idea what to do, it and I began a dance of sorts.  One of us would move slightly toward the other and which ever one of us felt put upon would step back and so on, until it was more then apparent that  neither of us knew exactly how to proceed, for what seemed like an eternity.   I spoke then, but not effectively.  I believe I said, "What do you want?"   


The horse didn't tell me what it wanted, but I figured it out.  Somehow one of us read the others thoughts and eventually we began walking side by side towards a ranch with a house, the only inhabited place within a mile or more.  It sat closer to the mouth of the mountains between which we both reside.   It would stop and I would stop.  I would go and it would go.   At some point, I touched it at it's long neck clumsily and we began that dance again.  It stepped back then forth, I sprang backwards then shuffled close again.   There came a point were I slide my hand beneath it's harness and walked a ways with my palm happily touching it's warm, wet, silky jaw.   I felt powerful beside the horse and I felt connected and I noticed the silence around me, but not the darkness, because something so large, when so close, seems bigger then the night itself.  
We clicked down the road together.   Its hooves, my heels clacking, like out of sync tap dancers, who are thrilled to be moving and unfazed by our poor timing.


It steered itself into what I guess was its home, where it likely had escaped from earlier.  The place dully disappearing into the outline of night was foreboding and drab, smelled like hay and horse.  Because it was late and because there was no sign of human life, only equine snorts and shuffles from stalls I could smell but not see, I let my companion into the center ring, where a fence might contain it, or so I hoped.  
It didn't seem too thrilled to be home.  It didn't appear to want me to go and I didn't feel all that glad about ending everything that suddenly seemed like something much more then I realized when I first turned my car around.
The horse watched me go, walked me to the end of the fencing and stood still until I could no longer see it's darkness against dark as I went further and further away.   
It was one of the loneliest walks of my life, back to my car.   The black road, the black night,  and a blackness seeping in, replacing the incredible rush of feelings I realized I experienced only now, so dramatically apparent  in the horse's absence.   
When I woke in the morning, I heard utensils shuffling from my kitchen below, which meant my visiting mother was awake and moving.  I felt the warmth of my little boy's still sleeping body next to me in my bed and in the palm of my hand, I smelled the horse.  I closed my fingers around it.   
I don't have the words to tell you how I felt that night or why.  I just felt... 

The opposite of today

Today it's dry outside.  For example; the bird bath, which was full last night, is empty, no trace of water.  Today, when the infrequent car drives up my narrow lane, dust rises in puffs that resemble a smoker's exhale.  Today after sweeping my driveway and then running down the road, playing with my kids and dogs, my throat immediately aches, my lungs burn.   I live in a place with extremes in weather.  

Two winters ago, home alone on a weekend morning, I woke to the whimpering of my bigger dog.  He was new to me then and his waking me to go outside was not a problem.  I appreciated it even.   He'd made a choice to communicate with me, I knew.  He could have easily relieved himself inside on the carpet or worse still, lifted his leg to my bed, as he'd done once or twice in the previous months.  

Though it was cold and damp, I got right up,  pulled on rain boots with my pajamas, ready to take him out in the very early and still dark morning, happy to do so.

Our rain was torrential and had been for days.   A creek was forming at the far side of my property,   The road was washing out, but I'd been through this before.  Nothing new about flooding to me.  Nothing new about crazy rain.  Extreme rain, extreme dry, these are regularities in my irregular, regular life.  

Because of the heaviness of the downpour, I chose to forgo letting him out at the kitchen, instead moving further through the house and into the garage, where I'd just lift the bigger, panel door up.  He'd want me to come with him outside and this would suffice, I assumed.  I could stand in the garage doorway, remain dry, call him back quickly and maybe return to my bed before I was fully awake.  Enjoy the utter decadence of still warm sheets for a few more hours of precious snoozing.  

I shoved at the door, planning to flip it open like I always did, using my shoulder to push.   But the door surprised me, rapidly loosing it's upward momentum.  Soaked and swollen from pooling water, the heavy wood came ricocheting back downward.  Its increased weight combined with gravity pounded into me, sending shocking waves of pain, dislocating my right shoulder.  I saw stars.  I was awestruck, dumb-struck, just plain struck.  I stood there in the dark of the garage wondering what to do next.

The Hurt Locker is not a good movie to choose on PayPerView when you're alone near dawn, in a three day long downpour, sitting with your arm propped up by pillows, your neck and collar bone packed in ice,  while you're wiggling incrementally trying to reconnect shoulder bones into the socket, slowly, bit by itty bit.   It comes across as depressing in fact and it creates a mental anguish that combines just fabulously with physical anguish.   

As I sat, rationalizing that I could in fact heal myself without bothering to go to the ER, I sipped coffee with Frangelico to numb myself.   It's a very good thing on a rainy, painy morning.  

 I heard something I'd call a "disturbance" coming from the rear of my house and I tortured myself enough to turn my neck and see what the fuss might be.  The rain outside the window was turning brownish. I decided to take a closer look.  How very interesting and timely my "taking a look" proved to be.   As I stood at the glass door of my kitchen, cradling my throbbing arm I actually saw a rockslide/mudslide happen.   It is rare I know.  Its extreme even and so watching it was somehow magically beautiful, almost as much so as it was difficult to endure.   It looked as though a giant, might have been stripping above the clouds, throwing down his brown clothing, piece by piece toward earth below him.   Some globs of falling mud were small as the giants socks might be.   Then came his shirt, his underpants, loose change from his pockets, his brown trousers, but then came his cloak.  Oh shoot.  A boulder, big and dark fell fast and landed in the last place I'd wanted to watch it settle.  My hot tub.  

I got my camera and snapped photos as disappearing water held previously within, rapidly vanished through the cracking tub.  

I felt an odd and satisfying connection to the film Hurt Locker, when it won an academy award.  

My shoulder healed quickly, my hot tub has since been replaced and today there is no sign of rain.  None what-so-bone-dry-ever.  

The Responsible Party

Pulling up the driveway of my home tonight I surveyed my fading Geraniums, noticed the dead-heads on the rose bushes.  Mental check list kicks in; need to water and prune ASAP.   Been away a while and it shows.  

 It's just me and the dogs tonight.  They are hot and weary from our recent hike, which had fed me, left me feeling replenished, pumped up, plus deliciously peaceful all at the same time; until I saw that my front door was standing wide open and clearly had been for hours.  

Dag-nab-it, who is responsible for this?!  Who can I yell at?  I look to the dogs, think of my kids.

Stamp goes my foot, down go my keys thrown hard on the ground, which sets off the panic button and sounds the car alarm.  

Sh_t!  ... and so who can I blame that on?  

I look around some more, stop the sounding horn, call back the upset pups.  

The reality is, there is no one to blame it on, except me.  I am it.  

I am the responsible party here.

Sometimes that realization drains me.   Sometimes it drains every drop of blood, joy, hope, freedom, life, juice out of me.

Like pulling a plug on a happily, lazily, taken for granted, full tub of gorgeous, tepid water - slurp, burp, all the good feelings vanish right from me.

I am solely responsible for everything and everyone in my proximate life.

The kids, the house, the dogs, the flowers, the car, the .... whatever.  It's mine and I am the responsible party.  

How frightening.

For some reason this thought, this fact, on this night, brings tears to my eyes.  Big ones.  

Big, plump tears roll off my checks; like pulling a plug on two, full, pedestal sinks, out goes the gorgeous, tepid fluid and my eyes drain till they are pretty close to empty.

Suddenly I can't stop noticing the pile up of things to do here.  Would you believe that even the roof needs sweeping?  It does.  Once a year or so I find a way to get on the peaked roof of my massive garage and push a broom across it to remove the dried leaves, scattered, small bit of branches, miscellaneous debris, that rain down from the hundreds of acres of wilderness behind my home.  I do it in a cute gardening dress of course, but I do it and its kind of hard and more then a little scary.  When I'm done I like to lie on the roof, look at the sky, feel closer to heaven and the birds.   It's the pay off for accomplishing the job.  Its good pay, trust me.  

Thinking of lying on the roof makes me feel better, better enough to want to not weep.  I scrape up some composure, go to the mirror, try to see what I look like when I cry (yea I know), blow my nose, but because I am responsible for every single thing, I cannot in good conscience put Klenex in the actual trash pail of the bathroom.  I'd have to empty it, it's only for guests to use.  So I behave responsibly and lift the toilet seat lid to toss my tissue, but, to my utter shock, as I do this, out hops a small frog.  A frog jumps out at me.  It was apparently sitting in my toilet, for I'm guessing about 11 days.  That was the last time someone might have used this particular room. 

 Sh_t again!! 

  I scream.  I jump.  Slam the door and shed another tear.  This time though the tear comes with laugher.  Laughing and crying. 

When my heart stops pounding and I stop laughing/crying/whatevering, I wonder if I am now also responsible for the frog.  

Probably so.  

My life is my party and I am responsible for it.  

That's alright with me.