misplaced mama

The earth has spun half way around the sun since the day your chubby, slithery self flew (literally) out of me.  Not just head, pause, then shoulders followed by spiraling body.  No, your entire body in one large force came through to earth.  This is how you entered, how you are, how you do things; fully your body experiences this life. without pause.  Nothing is in your way because you just move through it, effortlessly and physcially like it’s all yours, no time or reason to contemplate. I can see it now, I can see it for later.  It’s rather amazing, to be all here, all willing, all love, all kicks and swats and turns and wiggles.  The stillness happens though, when we catch a ray of light from the window, or we enter the berry patch and here the owl hoo.  When you lay in your hammock, just after your nap and before you yell for me to come get you;  you hear the girls running outside your open window.  You listen.  You know.  You think.

You are very much awake, child.  Engaging.  Present.  Alive.  Chubby knees and thighs.

You possess the movements of a three year old in a 6 month old vessel.  I try to remind you, stay a baby, girl, soon you’ll be running with them. And your rosie cherub face smiles and coos, drools.  Your hands reach up for my cheeks and you grab me hard and pull me to you and you to me.  You open your mouth and plaster my face with your kisses, on my lips, my nose my forehead,  Anywhere you can get some of my flesh.  You are a lover.  Oh, how you are a lover.  A lover that wants to love, but even more, wants to be loved.  The hell with being held.  You want to lay on your lambskin throw and have the whole family hover around you, cooing and laughing and tickling and speaking words about how brilliantly beautiful you are.  You love to be adored.  And you are.  Oh Lovey Dovey, you are adored.   You’ve brought our family full circle, a whole ring of love.  You’ve kept us together through this move, these transitions.  You are Peace.  Pure.  Wild. Peace.  You are the glue.

And most of all, to me, you are the final puzzle, the last pull, the dance of life, the perfect storm that has brought me back Home to Me; women, mother, creatrix.  I have never felt so full of ownership of this body and spirit and mind.  I still don’t know who I am or where I am going, but I find that a wonderful gift as well.  Thank you. 

your ma.

ps. this sister just wants to mother you and dress you and rock you and wear you.

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and this sister isn’t quite sure yet what to think of you totally yet, but her heart sparks and her eyes squint with smile whenever you are near her.

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Constant scrutiny. Every last drop of my being is under watch. All those eyes rarely leave me; they hear all, see all, feel all. I am followed and questioned and mimicked. My children watch. Twenty-four-seven, three-hundred and sixty five, infinity symbol. They need to know how to be in this world. I’m where they first turn. The cosmos spun them round and round and tossed them onto my lap. The first time they opened their eyes it was me they looked straight into. And they haven’t looked away since. Everywhere I look, walk, turn-around in shame or guilt, there they are. Looking. Watching. Waiting.

Did I sign up for this? This seriousness of uncovering my truths and scouring away the caked on, greased on goo of a person I had become? All those the years of being pretty sure nobody was interested in The Real Me, especially myself,  gathered up a bit of denial chickenshit crust around my being. This is a big job; you make a kid and all of sudden you’re the center of their lives, they’re down there so tiny looking up at you and you are up there so tiny looking down at them (or maybe squatting at eye level-it’s only polite) and they’re like, huh? and you’re like, what? and on top of that you have to keep them feed and dry and hopefully free of arsenic infested drinking water. And the whole time they keep looking at you like you know what you are doing.  And then what if, you don’t?

I knew that authority was something I had to dig a bit to mine, but authenticity? You can’t just whip that up in a night. It’s like I woke up one day and all of a sudden I realized I had to practice being the person trapped underneath the thick peel, and while I uncurled each layer of skin to reveal some sort of core, getting into each stage of myself, I realized, oh shit.  I’m being watched. Not only am I trying to become this true kind of person, but other people are taking notes. Not just random people, but by my children, they are the people I am made of, who are made of me. I hear my childless friends speak of the their transformations and epiphanies and shifts and it’s all well and good and I give great honor, but when you have a migraine after a tantrum after a long walk alone in the dark after all the soul-searching you can pop a aspirin and hit the pillow. I have to look into 6 dark brown and sometimes flecks of green big as the world eyes and say so what about some carrot sticks and creamy dill dip? Or a smoothie? Do you have underwear on? NO! I won’t stop the car for you sippy cup. And okay, there’s room for three on my lap, sure. grunt, moan, groan, sigh. My head is pounding. Mercury is in retrograde. My venus is in mercury. My temperature feels high. I need a drink. I AM A PERSON TOO. God, at least I trying to be.

I’ve exchanged breath with them. We held each others hearts under flesh together and pumped the same blood. My muscles hugged them out as they somehow fit their bones through mine and while my flesh tore their eyes opened to this light and still, for a long time afterward, we were connected by material matter and even after that was cut off, the cord pulsed, still does. If I am unveiling, revealing, becoming. So are they.

Always.

I am walking away from motherhood for moments, trying out different hats, standing with my hip stuck out to the right and then to the left, my arms empty, talking business or art, trading this service for that, creating professional relations outside the safety net of my family. And in this process I struggle, strangle, gag, spit-out regurgitated ideas about what I’m suppose to be doing and what I have no time for and what I always thought I’d be doing with kids and without kids, what I should keep doing and what I should put the breaks on. I walk away and then back, away and then back and in between I wonder howthehelligotintothisstayathomemomgig and then one second later I am reminded of howutterlyfuckingblessediamtobehererightnowwiththem. (Both of those 2 sentences much too hard for me to write out normally). Because I am both of them. Always will be.

And as live this,  looping myself in and out of making mush with milk and honey and making it to school on time and calling my mother at the right moment as to not catch her in too much pain and trying to be a lover and a partner and a creative and rhythmic mama of three girls, clean and yet not obsessively so [nobody likes a mom who walks around with a rag and sprayer bottle all. day. long.] they watch. They watch. They watch. Even when the are playing and coloring and squirting the hose on one another, I am nearby, and they watch. With their eyes, but even more: they monitor me with their hearts. After all, we have a cord running from one to another, big and thick, it transmits me to them and them to me.

Regardless if our children are relative reflections of ourselves in some sort of abstract or literal way, how I maneuver as this woman, this mother, this friend, this lover, this teacher matters. It matters. They hear me speak of things, I see M’s ears perk up as I speak of a necessary future of veganism and then they watch me stuff bread smothered in brie and the tops of two chocolate cream cheese cupcakes (the tops only of course) in my mouth. They listen as I help a friend through some inflexible times, aches and pains and emotional winces; I teach her some yoga through body and words and then the next day on the verge of a broken heart they see me not on the mat, but on the couch, staring into space, tears running down my face, silent curses under my breath. Mama, why are you sad? And do I scream at them how can I be a mom TO YOU when I might be loosing my own? WHO WILL TAKE CARE OF ME? No, I don’t scream that {out loud} but I sit there, stiff. I know what I want to be doing: breathing and taking up child’s pose, opening my heart to warrior, lifting my legs and opening my hips in dead bug/happy baby and sitting for long stretches in full pigeon. But I don’t and so they don’t see me doing what I really want. They hear me when I talk to them about sharing with each other and their friends and yet they hear me scold their dad, NEVER AGAIN USE MY TEEZERS TO PLUCK YOUR NOSE HAIRS. GET YOUR OWN DAMN TEEZERS. And to them: NO YOU CANNOT USE MY COMPUTER TO WRITE LOVE NOTES TO CODY [maverick of surf’s up].

How did this happen? Little one, gentle one, Happy Birthday.  You are THREE.  It’s been a big year: moving and weaning and becoming a big sister and going to playschool and getting your own bottom bunk.  Wow.  Three.  And as you like to say, Mama when I’m three I can play with razor blades and drink wine, ok?

No.  You can’t.  But we think it’s funny to hear you say it. 

I can tell you right now all the ways you bless our lives: your smile, your silly faces you make when you think nobody is looking, your funny and simply loveable nature make you a joy to wake up to every morning your appetite. Your artwork on my walls, little spirals which you call energy, are even easy to get over because you my dear, really are one of a kind.  Somedays I just look at your poppy and I ask him, how on earth did we get her? How did we get so lucky?  We just did, he always answers.  And it’s the truth. 

The other day I showed you photos of your birth, The Birth, the one that makes me sing inside when I think about it.  Yes, mama, that’s me and and that’s you and why is dada’s hair not all crumply?

He had it cut short when you were born.

And where was Mia?

With our friend.

Mama, was I like a mermaid and you like a mermaid?

uh-huh.

Mama, mermaids bring blessings.

They sure do.

When Mia was born was I there?

Nope.

Was I at the Souris (the source)?

Um, well, were you?

Yes, I was at the Souris.  Who was I with there?

I don’t know baby, who were you with?

I was with Gandhi.  Yes.  I was with Gandhi at the Souris and now I miss Gandhi.  I want him to come back.

And that’s you in a nutshell Sula.  Blessed.  Divine.  Sweet.  One of a kind.  A girl who has been around the world and back, a universal gypsy.  You have done your work and I know it’s not for me to say, but you are a wise old soul and I think instead of your own work here, you came down to help me with mine.  You seem to be done with the karma, but kind enough to hold me through my own.  You’ve been my daughter time and time again.  Our eyes lock and no words need to be uttered.  You are a woman of service and love.  This world needs you.

I love you.  We all do.  You sweep through space with magic and delight.  Happy third birthday.  You make my job so easy.  Thank you.

mama

My mother used to iron my father’s cloth hankies.  I think about that now, as I pull B’s crumpled clothes out of the dryer, button downs that he has to wear for sales meetings that look like elephant skin.  I don’t even own an ironing board and don’t ask me where the iron might be stored.  My mother use to fold and press, fold and press, creating a perfect square of a hankie, steam it all over and set in a small white pile of others that would soon be covered in my father’s snot an stuffed in the back pocket of his trousers.  She did this every morning while she sipped her coffee and listened to music.  She did this after she fingered the rosary but before we were up and had to make us breakfast.  She’d play her music, which was alternate elevator music and old Rod Stewart, and iron things like hankies and clothe napkins and tableclothes and underwear.  Yes.  Underwear.

In a million years I would never do anything like that.  I hate housework.  It makes me feel like I’m drowing.  I think I figured my mother must have hated all if it too because why wouldn’t she?  She was just a product of being brought up in an era that cleaned like a maid.  I’d imagine that she took up her days with housework, ironing and pleating, mending, and dusting, windexing and vacuuming to escape her real life; a life she never got to hold onto because she was the full-time, stay at home mother of seven children.  But now I see it a little differently, and I see she wasn’t escaping anything, nor was she being forced by cultural norms.  She was just living it.  In each fold, in each press of the steam button, she was living it.  And now I’d guess that was her form of spirituality, her practice; being in the clean of all things.  What I’ve been known to call OCD was probably more like my mother finding god in each moment of scrub and scour, press and fold.

And here I am in the rush.  I whip the clothes outta the washer, throw them in the dryer, too lazy to run across the property and hang them on the line, although in my heart I know that’s what I want to be doing: enjoying the morning sun while i carfully pin up the clothes, each baby piece cuter than the next,  noticing how soon the baby will be grown out of the clothes.  Instead, I  take what’s in the dryer and throw them in the basket, lug them upstairs to the couch in my bedroom and dump them out.  Done.  Laundry done.  Dig through the pile when one needs clothes.  I take the spray bottle of vinegar and lemon water and a bit of soap and start spraying like a madwoman.  Here there and everywhere I just spray and wipe, trying to get the crud off surfaces, but really I never do and am just fine with letting clumps and lumps of whatever stick the to granite top table.  I hand-pick big fuzzy shit off the carpeted parts of the house.  Not really interested in looking for the special vacuum cleaner bags that I need to replace the overflowing one in our vacuum.  One more day without vacuuming will be fine.  Depsite all the husky hair.  I wash my face half-assed, no gently circular motions or patting dry.  Get dressed without even looking at what I’m putting on.  Stir the oatmeal for Mia while thinking about the assumed struggle between how much honey she wants in it and what I am willing to allow.  Stressing over the garden while I gaze out the kitchen window. It is still not ready for the next season of growing.  Cracking an egg for Sula while cursing my husband for not finishing the chicken coop yet so we can stop buying organic eggs.  Always on to the next moment.   Always insulted by the present.  It seems this is where I am these days.

You know the ridges on old cabinets?  We have original cabinets from when the home was constructed, built right into the house.  They have a lot of area and corners and little ridges to clean.  I hate those spots and so I let them gather with dust and dirt and wildly flung coffee grinds and dog hair.  My mother had the same kind of cabinets.  She’d sit on the floor, humming along to the radio, with a little rag on her finger.  Never was there an ounce of dirt on her cabinets. I think back now and I can see her, in her act, never rushed or hurried or annoyed she had to do it.  She just cleaned it.  The look in her eyes, now that I remember, was a look of thanks, of gratitude.  She like to clean she liked her house.  She made love to her cleaning, cleansing the space she created for her children.

I drag myself to the pile of clothes on the couch.  I pick up a few shirts and hang them on hangers.  I try to be thankful, thankful we have clothes, happy that my husband has a job to wear them.  I pick up my new skirt, a fast favorite, take it between my hands and snap it in front of me. There.  Nice and crisp, just like ironing, practically.  I am grateful for this skirt, too, made locally and sustainably.  I take the rest of the clothes and carefully hang them on hangers, I make love to each move and moment, each piece of clothing I look at and feel, notice loose threads or stains that need to be dealt with.  I put them on the hangers in careful way so they won’t just fall off once I hang them on the rod in the closets.  I hand each of them one at a time.  I don’t hurry or rush.  The baby is sleeping.  The girls are having fun brushing their teeth.  I can be here in this, this can be my practice.  I am trying to like it more and even if I can’t, it can still be what I do fully.  It feels good.  My shoulders drop.  My breath comes back. 

***

I guess we all have our own spiritual practices that somehow we have to find while we mother full-time.  For my mom it was getting the dirt out,the wrinkles out, the stain out.  For me?  I guess I am still exploring.  Back here I had it down a bit better.  Right now I am still just living, wondering when my a-ha moment will come.  I spin my poi, feeling ready for another night of lighting them on fire.  I dance.  I sing to the baby in sankrit.  I write.  I love.  I cut fresh flowers from our garden.  I water each plant throughout the property my hand. I wipe faces and kiss owies, and change diapers. I make a million snacks that never get eaten.  I think of mother carefully folding the hankies, so thoughtfully and easily.  So proud of her piles and so grounded in her job.  While I was home last week my mother said to me, I can’t wait until this {the chemo} is all over.  I want to have everyone over for dinner and make all the food myself and then clean it all up with no help.  I can’t wait.  I think of all this was taken away from me, my ability to mother and take care of my kids and my house, perhaps making love to each moment is all I need and that right there, is all the practice i need i right now.

***

*thanks to Matt Sevenau, the other half of urbanearthmama, who described his wife to me as a person who ‘makes love to everything’.

due to the mysterious and ridiculious layout of this blog, i can’t bear to look at it, let alone write another word for it.

the misplacedmama staff is working on it.  until the, so sorry for the eyesoar.  i am no designer myself, but i can appreciate the beauty and simplicity of a well designed cyber-home.  and this ain’t it.  i have a file full of words, been writing the pen and paper method for a while now and as soon as i get this figured out, i’ll transcribe.

in the meantime, we’ll be enjoying the sunshine, wandering up the road to collect a basket of thimbleberries to stain Sula’s third birthday cake frosting a nice shade of pink. 

I’m home.  In more ways than one.  Being gone, away from my family for that long is something I just don’t love.  But on the othside of things, I know that part of my path is to move, to be with people I love, to spread health and hold them on their journey.  And if that means I have to be away from the kids, then so be it.  It makes me a better person to open myself up to others, and in turn, that makes me a better mother.

Mothering my mother wasn’t easy.  I tried to think back on how she nursed me as a child while I was sick.  There was lot of just letting be, but there were times of tougher love.  Like when my fever was so high and my throat so swollen and she insisted that I drink fluids.  I’d resist, but she’d insist.  Just a drop, a little drop, she’s say.  And so I said, just a drop, just a little drop. just a bite, a tiny bite.  just a walk, a short walk.  It’s uncomfortable to reverse roles and at the same time it’s beautiful, full circle.  Giving what I was given is the ultimate gift.

Stay tuned for more talk on berries and all the wonderous things to make with them,  living simply and slowly and how this is the hardest thing I’ve had to do, and more adventures on the path to spin fire.  Until then, here is a crazy-ass story about my trip.

I’m just not good at flying. Rewind.  What I mean to say it I am not good at is being a passenger on a plane.

Although I have been soaring the friendly skies on commercial airlines since I was a baby, it was around the age of fifteen when I realized, I hated it. Taking off over the endless Pacific, from California back to New York by myself, I found myself writing in my journal: We could crash. Oh my god. We could crash right now. Well, what other way to die? Sucked into the hole of the big blue sea? I can almost hear the silence of plane hitting the water now  As a matter of fact I am sure I’m going to die.  This big piece of tin is sparong through the air.  It’s not a bird.  It shouldn’t be up here.  There were so many things I wanted to do before I dropped into the blueness, the death, my death….

Morbid.

Shzzzt

Shzzzt

Shzzzt.

The bag full of the Chemo was getting small, the fluid level lowering, the plastic tightening, shrink wrapping around it. The liquid dripped and pumped and dumped itself into my mother’s skin through a long clear tube. It entered in through a hole above her left breast to be exact. I imagined it swimming through her system, looking for all the clean places to live, taking over her insides one swoosh at a time like a sea monster, green and fanged.

I walked to over to the bag and squinted at the small writing, the name of the doctor, the name of my mother, the date, the nurse who administers it to her.

What’s in this shit, anyway? Why aren’t there any ingredients listed here?

It’s not a juice box, it’s a bag of chemo.

I think of it like a person, an evil person and I hate it. I hate it, ma.

Silence. I break it.

Okay, lets think of it like this instead. It’s a healing liquid, pure god gold, and it comes from the deepest soul of the cosmos and it heals, it’s pouring into your body like a healing light. And it swims and waves through you and leave behind a trail of love, of beautiful healthy love. Okay?

Sounds good to me. She looks up and smiles and her eyes go back down to her lap.

She flips through Real Simple Magazine. Hhhhmmm, that salad looks good, it has salmon on it. I dunno, even though it looks good it’ll taste like metal if I eat it. Yuck. Nothing tastes good.

I’ll make you something good when we get home. Mango cobbler? Wilted spinach?

We’ll see if I can even eat.  My doctor to said to eat anything, whatever I want, but nothing everthing tastes like crap, my mouth is so dry.  She smacks her lips, her tongue.

I sit down in the chair next to her. My boobs fill with milk. I press them in tight with my hands. Z is at home in good hands, in the arms of my mother’s sister.

I know you don’t want to hear this, but ma, you look real good. I mean considering your age and the chemo you have had, you look good. Your skin glows. I mean besides your hair, which isn’t all that bad, you look good.

Well, looks can be deceiving.

She doesn’t want to hear it. Everyone tells her that. She feels so horrible and so weak and so utterly not herself, she gets annoyed when people tell her she looks good. She want’s them/us to know she does not feel good, that she still needs to be held, that she still needs care.  She wants to be angry and sad and as she says, have a pity party and she’s the only one invited. We all tell her she has every right now, she has every right.  But we also want her to feel strong and the pillar that she, that at least we all want her to still be. 

I know you don’t feel good, ma, I know you don’t. But just know you look beautiful. As ever.

And I mean it. She is breathtaking. Almost 78 years old and she is one of those woman who should model, one of those old wise souls who should be in a book about how you look better with age. Her skin is rosey and clear, wrinkles seem to be erased, her eyes dark and set deep. Her weight loss only happened her belly. Now she is a little sprite of a lady, but with nice full breasts. Her hands, when I look at her hands, I still see strength.

She reaches up to fluff her thinning hair, it’s puffy like angel hair, the roots gray, the ends a familiar color of auburn. She sighs.

I usual spiral down tonight, the second night of the treatment.

Well, maybe you will and maybe you won’t. We’ll see.  We’ll get you home so you can hold that baby and I’ll make you food.  Maybe it will be different this time around.

We’ll see.

***

You know what’s I’d like to do? Talk to your doctor. Maybe I can help him turn this Chemo center into a holistic treatment center. You know, a section for real cancer nutrition, like the real deal and a section for massage and skin treatments, an area for counseling for patients and families. I think I’ll ask him about it. This place needs more, it’s so big yet empty.  It feels sterile.  Did you see the vending machine?  It’s filled with junk food!  There should be a juice bar here!  Not oreos and cheetos.  There should be whole body services.  Maybe I should propose it to him?

Please, don’t. He’s has no bedside manners.

Well he should.

But he doesn’t and I could care less. I just want to get this done with. Only 4 more sessions to go. I just want this to be ALL DONE.

***

You know what you should do when this is all over with? Whatever you want. Everything you never got to do while raising 7 kids, let’s do it now. We’ll take out tons of credit cards and go to where your family is from in Italy. Or anything. Anywhere. You have amazing credit.  We can 50 grand and credit and go wild. What do you want to do?

I always wanted to drive across country. When you were in high school, I thought it would be a nice thing to do with you. You weren’t  interested.

Well I am now! lets drive across country!

Sounds good to me. I also want to spend a week in Seattle, just wandering around. Seattle sounds like a nice place to me right now. 

It is, it’s a beautiful city. That’s an easy one to do, we can do that first.  Then Hawaii? Austria, where your mother was born? Then we can head over to Italy. Then maybe Spain. Oh, Greece, we gotta get you to Greece.

Maybe. I think I will, hon, it sounds great. Let’s just get through this, though, okay? I need to get through this first.  I hope I don’t throw up all day.  She knocks on wood.

Leave it to her to live in the now and leave it to me to want to lean into the future so badly I practically have my nose smashed into the sidewalk.

***

She walks around the house with this box, shhzt, shhzt, shhzt. It pumps more chemo in her body. I try to think of it as that liquid light. But it’s hard. I hate it. I want to throw it out the window. I want to scoop her up in my arms and hold her to my breast and nurse her to health, be all she tried to be to me and more. I want her here forever and that’s just not going to happen, so all I can hope for is for her to have a few more years of health, so she can run wild, be single and free and feel life, for once, for once in her life, to live life for herself. For nobody else.  No bed making or doing my dad’s laundry, no putting up with him and his bad habits, no putting up with needy kids, no dishes to wash or floors to scrub.  The funny thing is, if she was to do it all over again, I think she’d change nothing. She is a mother. That was her life. Is her life. Will always be.

This is what you get when you play with your local farmers* kid (not just a kid, but a beautiful and vibrant and wise little three year old being) while they work at bringing their community fresh food.

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This may not be a big deal to you, to accept food straight from the hands that cared for and planted the seed, the hands that loved and tended and sweat to bring the seed to life, hands that are strong and dark with the stain of the Earth.  To be in the same space with their bodies, strong and sore from bending and weeding,  fingering and gathering the divine produce is like part of my life dream fulfilled.  Farmers are rock stars to me and my family.  Good food is my life and there is no good food without the love and time from real people who grow it.  I grew up with stories about farming from grandpa, he came from a goat herding and farming family back in the Old Country, he spoke with respect and reverence about his family who showered his whole village with food. My parents and oldest siblings walked up the street in our hometown to the now defunct farm to collect produce and milk eggs.   I now live in a place minus the big box whole food organic stores, here we have co-ops and public markets which offer smaller yet just as satisfying services without all the ’sex’ appeal and certainly without all the imports.  But there is nothing, nothing at all like the hand of an outstretched farmer with a bunch of radishes and carrots, emerald greens and spicy onions, vibrant brocoli (the best broc i have ever tasted, made a raw tahini dip and dipped all day long.  yum!) succulent berries and the sweetest snaps peas ever standing in your kitchen, offering you this real food, filled with love and hope.

So as a PSA: run, don’t walk, to your nearest small family organic farmer and offer to play with their kids, weed, clean their house, or pay them cash.  Do whatever you can so they can continue to change the world one seed at a time.  Because this is what it takes.

*if link does not work, please check out my friend’s farm blog: 1smallseed.blogspot.com

***

on a side note, i leave tomorrow for a 10-day long trip.  dropping of the big girls in our desert home away from home while i continue on to NY where i will be preparing real food for my mama while she continues her journey through chemotherapy.  i uncook for her (raw foods) and a mix of macrobiotic menu.  i vacuum, gently brush her thinning hair, hold her hand, keep her company, work in her yard, and mostly just hand over the baby dove, because that baby heals her heart and soul, she is my offering to my mother who gladly accepts (the big girls can’t come, their pre-school germs aren’t allowed near my mama’s compromised immune system.  will try to write on the road, but if not…enjoy the juiciness of summer in a berry or a melon and pitcher of hand squeezed lemonade.