S.

You are twenty months today. I can’t get a decent picture of you because you are a whirl of static, a flash of fuzz, a stream of of light.

Pure magic.

You don’t like clothes.  Nothing unique, but still amusing to see you walking around naked with your little orange rubber crocs on, peeing here and there and everywhere.  You have removed your diaper and peed on the couch so many times this month, our microfiber modern sofa is officially over.  Done.  I am sitting on it now typing and I almost want to hurl at the smell of old urine that has soaked right down to the core.  That’s okay.  A red leather one is on our way to us and that one will not soak up your piss.

You really can talk and converse and count to 22 and say your ABC’s.  You can sit down and recite Dr. Suess (almost) word for word.  You try to snap.  You sing along with The White Stipes (we get in the car and you beg for "Jooo-Ween, Jooo-Weeeeen"), Jack Johnson, Rob Simmeon, The Bravery, and Great Stone.  You are especially fond of your Baby Sign Say and Play CD as well as Princess Stories…both of which I have heard one too many times.  Your favorite book is Goodnight Moon which you ask for by "My Moon!" (Yes, it is your moon, Susulala.  It’s all yours.) and Old Hat New Hat.  But like your sissy, books of all types are your love.  You’ll be gone into your room, a bit too long for my taste and I will think you have climbed up on your craft table and figured out how to open your window to take a stroll down the street (not kidding, because really that is the kind of little lady you are; looking for adventure) but when I run down the hall, I’ll find you and Mia sitting on the bed either reading books side by side or she’ll be reading one to you.  And for that moment I want my memory to always work.  To see you both with your noses in a book…the feeling is pure honey, warmth, a warm bath.  I love it.  I hope that words soothe you, take you away and mesmerize you like they do me. 

You relationship with Mia is expanding in all directions.  For all those months where you could not even lift your head, let alone defend yourself, you are now holding your own.  Your tough, she’s tough, and that does make for an interesting day.  A favorite game you play together is called "MY MAMA".  Mia will come up to m, grab a leg and start with, "MY mama!" And you will come up to me and grab me and say, "MY mama."  Then Mia will go over to a doll and grab the doll, "MY baby!" And you will grab another doll, "MY dolly!"  Mia will take a bowl off the counter and say, "MY bowl." You’ll go right into the cupboard and get yourself a bowl and say, "MY bowly. (you put a Y on the end of almost all words)"  Shit, this game can go on for hours and it cracks me up.  You both get a kick out of it, too.When
I ask you to choose something, like, "Sula, do you want brocolli or carrots?  A dress or jeans? This or that?"  Your answer is always, without a doubt, "pink".

Your eyes are still saucers.  Infectious with raw emotion and sage-like sparkle.

Your hair is all whispy and light and starting to curl and I could smell it forever.  

 You lay on you back, naked, and pat your bottom area saying, "Yoni, yoni, yoni!"  Smiling.  You know the sacred gate you possess already.  I love it.

 You really get into your wooden ricking horse.  You climb on,  not sitting on it, but standing on it, balancing on this narrow seat, and while you rock crazily back and forth, you sing, "Go Sula, go Sula go!  Go Sula, go Sula, GO!" 

You like to hang out on-top of the kitchen table, dancing close to the edge, pushing your limits.  I hope your coordination catches up with your bravery.

You and your sister are sincerely becoming best friends.   I never had a sister who was closer than ten years in age to me, so this is something so fresh, new, amazing.  You have a SISTAH.  A blood sistah.  And I will do everything and anything in my power to keep you both so in love with each other.  Each morning when you wake up, the looks on your faces when you see each other, a new day with a sister by your side…it is apparent that you both have one of the greatest gifts in the world.  Sisters.  If I could only catch in words what it looks like when Mia is looking down at you with pride and you are looking up at her in awe.  Mia takes your hand and leads you through this world, sometimes gently, sometimes not.  You accept her lead, and go down her airy and butterfly filled path of beauty and decadence, rocker style, but in your own way, you are teaching her a world of street smarts and fire and mystery. Her wind spreads your fire and your fire dances in the pockets of her wind.  Perfection.

It’s such a pleasure to cook for you.  You have a passion for food and eat almost anything colorful and nutritious that I prepare for you.  I love picking out culinary combos,  filled with color and shape and texture.  You love quinoa or brown rice mixed with kidney beans and shavings of raw carrots and and shreds of raw spinach.  You love to scoop handfuls of goat yogurt into your mouth, sucking away at each finger and licking your palm.  You adore tofu (toe-food) that had been cooked up with sesame oil and you like to dip it in Goddess Dressing.  Apples, ‘nanas and grapes rank with you.  If you could you’d eat Salmon Sashimi every day (me too!)And blueberry smoothies you think are the bomb. You like to crunch on cut up cucumbers that I sprinkle with balsamic vinegar and salt and fresh mint from our garden.  That’s another thing, you love to wander outside and climb yourself up into the raised garden bed and pick the heads off the chamomile flowers and pop them in your mouth.  Your sister taught you that you could do that.  Now if only the chamomile would get you to sleep like it’s suppose to.  Next thing I’m going to grow are poppies.  Poppies will make you sleep….

Yeah.  Your sleeping habits are starting to get to me.  Even though you are exhausted you will fight your sleep until you are blue in the face.  You’ll fall asleep regardless of nursing you down or not, but either way, you fight it.  You do sleep in your own bed now with your sister, both of you spooned together like two little bugs.  I lay down between you and devour those moments when you’re both breathing rhythmically and heavy, together, knowing the fairies have taken you away to dreamworld.  The other night Mia was talking (yelling) to you in her sleep: "Sula!  Sula!  Look!  It’s MAAAAGIC.  MAAAGIC!"  And you whimpered, "Mia.  Mia.  Mia." But until that happens…we have a bit of a struggle. When you do nurse down you have begun to so something that Mia did when she was months and months younger than you are now.  You switch back and forth on my nipples in the most compulsory fashion.  Not only do you switch, but once you are done with one side you try to push my nipple, like a button, back into my flesh and you get really annoyed when it won’t go in.  Like you are trying to cap the milk or shut off the tap, you want it to be officially ‘pushed off’ before you go to the other one.  You won’t stop trying until I stuff my poor boob back in the bra so you can’t see it anymore and you then move on to your next.  Oh, this is so hard for me Sula.  My body, my breasts, my life…they are all still so yours and of course I give to you as I can,  but it is a hard journey.  Not one I would ever regret for one single second. We are attached and I would find no comfort in any other way of raising you.  I am sure when you ween I will cry and mourn and wish I had just one month longer, but while walking this present path, the lessons of motherhood ram into my face like a right hook.  I don’t sleep as much as I want.  I don’t spend nearly enough time on myself, my practices, my arts.  I am never alone. I can’t put my professional sights anywhere yet, because you are my view.  But my practice right now is Mama: giver, nurturer, guide. I try to breath these lessons in deeply and let my heart release into a wide open sun, but there are times when I lay down on my belly and bury my front side into the bed or couch and I refuse to give it to you.  I refuse you.  I hand you to Dada while you scream "Mmmaaaaammmaaa!!!" But I walk away. Done.  I am done some moments of some days (and these days you cling to me like Velcro).  And that is okay.  I am allowed to walk away and you are allowed to scream for more.  We are setting up gentle boundaries.  It all happens in time and naturally.  I move on intuition.  So do you.  You move on need and emotion.  So do I. You grow.  I grow.  We learn.  Sometimes you can’t have all of me, all the time, all at once.  Sometimes I just don’t get you off me. Sometimes I have to just sit down and remind myself you are growing like a wild weed, and soon I’ll have more space around me then I could ever imagine.  Until then, we give.  We take.   We do our dance, together and alone.

 Twenty months is two months younger than what Mia was when you were born.  Wow what a different perspective!  You are still such a baby to me and your sister seemed to precocious.  At the same time, you are growing into little wee girlhood.  You fingers and legs are getting even slimmer.  You face is taking shape, cheek bones lifting, lips filling out, muscles carving curves and dips.  My favorite being the goddess arch you have in your lower back, right above your fanny.  You have your own special walk and your own special Sula Looks.  Dada and I always talk about the 1000 faces of Sula.  From happy, to perplexed to stunned, to sad, to "are you kidding me?" to "go to hell." all in five seconds flat.  You look like so many different people, all of which come from my side of the family.  Your Auntie Candy Lisa (yes, this name is because she is famous for her packages of sweets) noticed how you really could have been a baby of my mamas.  You look like a perfect mix of my Sicilian and my Eastern European mix.  I love it.  Your Auntie Becky and Auntie LeeLee call you "Mini-Mary" because they think you look so much like me.  I swoon.  Seriously.

 In essence, I look at you and I sigh.  Can I have had something to do with this wonder?  Can I possibly do justice with this job, being hand selected by you as a parent?  There are so many mysteries that surround you.  From the speckles of freckles randomly scattered around your body like the consellations of lost galaxies, to the middle eyelash on each eye being a good millimeter longer than the rest.  Or how could it be that a human could have such perfectly aligned, tan toes? And those ears, are elfin or pixie?  You have a slight obsession with Bald Eagles ever since seeing one in New Mexico three months ago.  You wake in the middle of the night and in your sleep will mutter, "Bald Eagle."  You have done this 3 times now.  Every bird we see you say, "Mama!  Bald Eagle coming!  Bald Eagle!" Eagle medicine in Native culture is a direct connection to Divinity or Great Spirit.  Eagle is fierce and challenges us to find the courage to soar to great heights, and if we have the faith to do so, the thermals of the Universe will carry us through anything we desire.  I hope you find freedom from reaching and soaring, daring to go to the greatest heights of your being.

At night, when we go on our walk, and you are bouncing up and down on my back, you look up at the sky and say, "Sing, Mama!  Sing Moon!  Sing Mama Moon!" So I make up songs about how Grandfather Sun has gone to bed and Grandmother Moon sails high in the sky.  And you listen.  And that is what I have noticed about you these past couple months.  You listen.  You listen and listen.  To me.  To Dada.  To Mia.  The birds.  The crickets.  The wind.  The moon.  You slow down to a stop and I watch you listen to what is happening around you.  This is new to me because Mia does not do this.  Not yet.  But you seem to have grasped the goodness in opening the ears and the mind and the heart and taking it all in.  And that is prayer for you this cycle, this newness of Spring, is that you keep listening  to what is being born around you.  That you continue to develop this virtue. Because to truly become intuitive, to become a servant, to become whole, is to be a listener.  What you hear is most likely more important than anything you will ever say.  Blessed be.

Mama.

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(sorry so short, but you are hanging from my boob right now and it sort stings.) 

There is just something not quite right about tampons.  The strangeness of insertion, the yucky sensation I get when I remove them, all slithery. My shoulders always rise to my ears when I pull one out which is an indicator that something just isn’t right. Not to mention the feeling ‘of being ‘corked’ or "plugged". Like I can’t breath down there.  Like I am sufficating my yoni.  I’ve been using tampons since I started bleeding, just about 20 years ago.  My mother always warned me, telling me not to use them while I was growing up. Everytime I’d add "tampex regulars" to her grocery list she’d remind me nothing should be going up our vaginas (and I suspect with her Catholic-induced sexual frigidness and fear,  she really meant nothing). "It’s not healthy to stick something up there. You’re just asking for bacteria, keeping that blood sitting inside you like that."  I’d just sigh her off, not grasping her unknown wisdom at the time and sassily asked if she wanted me to use the enormous kotex belt that looked like a sling and terrycloth diapers she had in the closet from 1955. And I’d be sure to add that since she had gone through menapause already, she must have been saving them for me and I. Didn’t. Want. Them.  "Don’t get smart with me. Listen to your mother. Use a pad," she’d snap back.  I never listened.  Nobody used pads.  Pads were gross.  Big, thick, stinky.  And just the thought of leaking through my two-toned acid wash jeans in 8th grade mortified me.  And what if the boys could see the bulk.  As if I’d ever use a pad.  Please.

And for years I didn’t think twice.  I purchased box after box of tampons.  Even though it’s not recommended, I still slept with those things in.  I figured Toxic Shock was like eight days of keeping a tampon in, not eight hours. Until I moved to L.A. and met my future husband and we spent the first three months after meeting in bed, I never thought about using another method.  My friends would call me and I would ignore their demands to get out of bed with my new man and to go for drinks or dancing with them.  No way.  I was in ecstacy. This was too good to last and I wasn’t about to get dressed if I didn’t have to.   The sex rocked and I was so needy for it, that when my moon cycle came along, I racked my brain about how I could go on getting laid without making a big embarrassing mess?  Who knew how long this relationship would last, I wasn’t going to waste a week on bleeding. That’s when my friend Beth introduced me to The Cup. 

The Cup was exactly that except it resembled more of a bowl.  Like a diaphram, yet smaller and with more rubbery material that you just folded it in half and inserted all they way up your vagina near your cervix.  At the time I don’t think I even knew where my cervix was (my first problem) and although I had played around down there, I wasn’t really comfortable with three to four fingers entering me holding a little folded bowl, which was suppose to snap into place once it hit the right spot and open up.  When you bled, it filled up and held the blood like a vessel holds water.  It took me a few tries, and constant re-reading of the directions (did it really say three fingers were needed to put in place? Maybe four? Why not just say insert hand?) holding my breath and getting anxiously hot trying to insert it in the proper locale, not that there were many corners to turn once inside, but still I searched.  When it seemed to be in the right spot, I let go and it snapped opened, just as the directions indicated, although it felt a bit low (blamed it on having a short vagina) and if I wasn’t mistaken, I could feel it in me.  The directions did not say I would be able to feel it. Oh well.   I exhaled, lit some candles, put on the Rockers to Rockers album, and waited for my beau, the maybe- new- love -of -my- life to come home from work.

He called and said he was running late.  I poured some wine.  He called a again and said he’d be later.  I poured more wine.  The more red wine I drank the more I felt my blood thin and head downward.  I walked around the apartment like I was balancing a bowl of water on my head, but really I was balancing a bowl of blood in my birth canal.  I kept thinking it was going to ‘pop’ out of place and spill out of me.  I kept thinking that one side tipping and it was sliding down my vagina.  Maybe I was too loose down there for it?  Did it come in sizes? I never even checked. Maybe I got a small and I was a size medium? Something wasn’t right. Maybe it was the fact that I was drunk. When I sat down and crossed my legs and tried to relax on the couch I winced in pain.  It pinched me.  That little fucker! And as the wine hit me a bit more, I started to get really nervous about the removal.  How was I suppose to get this thing out?  I had tossed the directions in the trash!  I ran and dug through the garbage to get the paper.  My eyes searched the folded up paper frantically to see how to remove it.

Insert first and middle finger up vagina until you feel The Cup.  Use your finger tips to pinch a bit of The Cup and grab on to the bottom surface of The Cup. Gently tug until it begins to move down, being careful not to spill blood.

Blood spilling?  After the debauchery that I planned on happening that night, how was I ever going to get it out?  Could I sleep with it in, or would it over flow?  Or fill up so heavy with my blood that it would sag all the way down to my opening?  And then if there was a little morning glory action, my man would get close to me and his penis would bounce back out of me like a trampoline.  Or forget the morning, what about tonight? What if he could feel it up there during lovemaking?  What if he knocked it out of place? It said it was safe to have sex with it in, but what iif my vagina was indeed too short?  Or his penis was too long?  What if it spilled all over him and he never wanted to see me again? 

Just when I was about to call my friend Beth and bitch her out for this Cup Curse, Bill walked in the door.

"Baby," he looked around at the candles, the music, the wine.  "It’s so nice in here.  Let me jump in the shower…or better yet, why don’t you come in with me…." He smiled.

I just looked at him.  I shook my head no.  I could feel that damn cup in me and all I could think about was that cup and my blood drip-dropping into it heavier and heavier. Plop, plop, plop.  I was never going to relax enough to actually have sex. 

"I have a little bitty bowl in me."

"You smoked a little bowl? That’s nice." He looked slightly confused.

"No! Not smoked a bowl.  I put a bowl up me. Down there." I pointed to my vagina. "The Cup, actually, not a bowl, but it looks like one. A bowl that is. " I sounded like an idiot.  "Period.  I have my period.  It’s suppose to catch your blood so we could…you know… still do it."

"What? A bloodcatcher?" He smiled.  "Sounds Native American. Anything like a dreamcatcher?,"  he laughed.

I wanted to cry. I got serious. "Okay. Billy. Listen to me. Please. NO joking.  I just drank a bottle of wine, my blood is thinning and I am bleeding prefusily into this thing and I need to go! take it ! out!" I think I shouted. Drama queen, he must have thought I was an utter drama queen. 

"Okay, love, okay.  It’s okay.  Go right ahead. Let me know if you need me.  I’m going to be in the shower."

Since the shower was in the bathroom and the bathroom was really the only place I felt appropriate to remove a blood filled bowl, I guess we’d be in the same room.  You have to understand.  He was 22 and I was 23 and our relationship was slightly immature at that point; we basically kept it simple by dranking and eating and fucking and hanging out at the beach.  We had just begun to open up to eachother about our dreams and granted, we knew we had a spiritual connection, but we were so young we had no idea what that was or what it meant and like I mentioned we were newly together. This was going to be our first raw exposure to all things not sexy. I’m pretty sure we hadn’t even farted in front of eachother yet and now I was going to try to remove my modern day period-vessel while he was 3 feet away.

He jumps in the shower and I stand over the toilet with my skirt up and my hands under it.  Okay, let’s see.  Two fingers up me.  Okay, a bit dry since this felt like the most unattractive thing I have done in a while.  I look around the bathroom.  Neosporine?  Fine, that will do.  Better than toothpaste.  I lube up.  Two fingers up me.  Up.  A little more up.  I try to breath.  And finally…The Cup!  I felt it. A bit of success!  It was a sagging little bottom of a cup, though, and it was really. really. full.  I tried to pinch it between my two fingers.  I tried.  And tried.  And tried.   But there was literally no slack to grab onto. If only I had long nails.  Tweezers?  No, definately not tweezers.  My fingers began to have aches, my wrist was cramping and I swear my middle finger charlie-horsed.  I was going to cry.  My forehead sweating and dripping into my eyes.  I pulled my hand out of me and shook it to relieve the cramping. Ahh. Relief.  I tried again.  And again.  And no luck. I sqatted down and tried.  I lifted my leg up on the sink and tried. I tried to go in from behind.  I tried every pose imaginable and there was no humanly way I could angle myself and get a pinch of that cup.

"Um. Billy?"

He turned of the water.  Jumped out of the shower, dripping and glistening all over his body.  His tattoos.  His blue eyes. His beach boy tan.  Sigh.  I was in love. I was screwed.

"You’re going to have to go in." He looked at me blankly.  "And get it out." I pointed to my crotch.

And that is where I will end except to say he did indeed retrieve it without complaints and with no sexual favors from my part that night. Oh, and it did spill.  All over his hand and the floor. And he’s still with me. And I vividly remember him squatting down next to me, while I laid like his patient and saying, "Baby, I am still so very much into you regardless if we have sex or not. Okay?"  I felt pathetic.

This story has a deeper meaning for me.  I remember laying in bed that night curled up next to him feeling at first really ashamed that I tried to hide my bleeding. Feeling stupid that I tried to cling to Billy through a sexual journey, not having faith in myself to sustain the relationship without the lust.  Then I realized that when it was my time to bleed it just wasn’t a time for sex.  It was a time for me.  And I made a promise to myself to try not to think my bleeding as sick or annoying. The next month I stayed in and practiced being alone while I bled.  I wrote in my journal and ate mad amounts of chocolate and chamomile flower essence and I even started to meditate.  I walked on the beach and became aware that the moon was always dark, deceivingly absent, when I bled. I started paying more and more attention to the moon in general from that point on. It was the first time me or anyone in my life had honored my cycles.  I felt finally like a woman; full of mystery.  Full of knowledge.  Truly sexy.

I am on my moon right now.  This will be the 5th Moon cycle I have had since Decemeber 2002.  Between 2 pregnancies and continous nursing, my bleeding had stopped for a bit.  I am back to being a woman; ripe, moody, wet, my body waiting to be fertilized.  Each month the memory of what my womb is capable of creating flows out of me in mysterious and powerful rivers.  And tonight I just couldn’t bare to put another tampon inside.  They have simply become gross to me. A purchase and an act I do not enjoy making or doing. They resemble a punk rock rat after removal and the sight of it just rips from me the sacredness and psychic space this really is.  This blood holds highly sought secrets.  Secrets of being a women. Call me a witch, but I think it to be magic.  Should it be soaked up in a bleached out cotton pack, wrapped in tissue and thrown in the garbage?  As I would never throw my baby’s placentas in the trash, why would I block the tunnel in which they traveled, in which this blood travels, and then dispose of it? Like it was never meant to be when it is the proof we truly are to Be.

But what are my options?  I’m still not into those pads.  I thought about going outside and sitting in my garden and bleeding next to my mint and parsley while my girls painted on their easal, but I live in the city and there are gaps in my backyard fence and my neighbors don’t seem hip to the blood mysteries.  I saw an ad for reusable pads, but seriously, isn’t it gross enough that I have a big bag of dirty, smelly cloth diapers hanging on my bathroom door, waiting to be washed?  Do I need a bag of bloody ones, too?  Somebody told me a new and improved versions of The Cup has entered the market, but I don’t trust it.   I guess I could go on Lunesta Birth Control Pill and only get my period four times a year!  That’s only nine moons of dead energy locked in the uterus.

Anyone want to pitch a red tent out in the desert next new moon?  Because that is all that makes sense to me at this point. We can call in sick to our jobs because we should have the right to.  Our men can bring us fresh meals and a supply of chocolate (and take care of the kids).  We can cry and complain and tell stories. We can laugh hysterically and swear like there is no tomorrow.  We can let go of what it done and gone and take in what is the new.  We can honor our blood. We can forgot about sex.  We can celebrate the gift of death and rebirth we’ve been given each and every month. A time and place for us to just take off and be women, expected to do nothing and need nothing but the earth beneath us.

Now wouldn’t that be something?

(And apology for the type-o’s and spelling errors.  I have had computer issues this month and lost a hard drive which in turn lost all programs that enabled me to create documents which is where my spell check is.  As far as my eyes can see, I can’t find a spellcheck on blogsome.)