misplaced mama

I’m leaving the desert now. My husband and the girls wave goodbye to the desert growth and the ragged stone mountains and ninety degree temperatures in October. The Upsetters (King Tubby in a Fine Style) play on the Ipod and the sound is smooth and bittersweet. I am munching on the chocolate chip cookies Leigh made us all for the road.

I remember when I first entered the desert almost three and a half years ago. There was this great inner door that got swung wide open. As soon as we crossed over into the vastness, I felt my spirit unlock. Space. Grand, empty space. A blank slate. But on the other hand there was a left-over presence of ancient sea, remnants of salt water still lingered in the air. And I said to myself, to start over. With the little girl slung to my hip, a lover with now short hair, and me in jeans with no tears and the purple die stripped from my hair, we will start over. And thus began a journey of such awakening. Entering a place with two things on our minds: money and security. And now I am leaving today with little of either of those two things and that is okay, because money burns and security can be suffocating. Instead I leave with such love and gratitude and a deep awareness that I have been schooled intensely while living here. I truly leave a better person. Happier, lighter, more authentic, and humbled by the light I have been given by this open desert spirit; she is bronze-skinned, naked except for some suede knee-high boots. She is raw and honest. She has been my goddess guide of the desert, and because of wounds and struggle and painful waiting, she was able to enter in me. The only way she enters is to finally be open and willing to struggle. To be it. To allow other people into it. To befriended the darkness with love.

I leave with the heart prints beautiful people. I will admit, I never thought I could develop such serendipitous friendships as I have here, but I was so very, very wrong. I depart with some of the most profound and healing friendships in my psyche, streaming through my DNA for ever. I was talking to Bill about the kind of person I am. Too gregarious to be an introvert, yet too multi-layered to really let anybody completely in. But I met a few people here who I want to jump in me, to know all of me, to be with me internally and externally forever. These are the people I sit on the porch swing with, age 89, drinking Lynchburg lemonades, and smoking pot from a blown glass bowl. We talk about books and art and grandkids, and how well we are still shitting, and what’s up with sex as old crones. And until that day, we continue to play and explore together, holding red tents and gathering. Watching. Loving. Give thanks to this desert home.

I do not say goodbye well. And so I say Aloha. You all know who you are. ________________________________________________________________________

Damian Jr. Gong Marley blasts on the stereo. I want to pull over and make love to Bill in the worst way right here outside on the side of the road as we cross from desert to juniper, the sky in layers of orange and coral pink and blue. But the girls are still awake. Their faces are covered with chocolate. They sing along in their own version of patois. Everything right now seems perfect and blessed. There is a sense of freedom happening right now between all of us that I have never experienced before. Perhaps the closest I have felt before were those few moments after Sula’s birth, where there was no linear world, only us, and we were everything. That’s what it’s like now. It’s a spell, perfect for the month of October. My favorite month, where my power soars and my confidence is like a mountain. Sula has a witch-like glow to her eyes, she has become older and wiser in the past month, her bangs long and frames her face, she exudes this mystery, and I am in just awe that she came from me. Mia has lost her fears in the last stretch of drive. She has stopped crying and now she stares out the window, mama look at those mountains, those beautiful mountains. She traces her fingers over the glass, outlining the grandness of those ancient formations. We won’t make it to the Grand Canyon tonight. Instead we will sleep somewhere close to the greatest hole in the earth and begin our trek to Zion. I am told I will find true heaven on earth there.

Here is where I woke up this first night. We make oatmeal with vanilla soy milk, raisins and chopped apples fresh from a farm. We sit outside, our skin chilling and tightening, becoming rosy from the new morning sun.