misplaced mama

To The Woman in the Jeep Cherokee at Silver Lake Park on October 21, 2008:

Did you really have to be such a bitch?

I said I was sorry that my dog was off-leash. In case you somehow didn’t notice when you pulled up next to my car, my baby was screaming glass-shatter style, my three year old was sobbing over an entire steamed milk that spilled down her front and my five year old was standing on the console, taking her clothes off for reasons unknown while I was trying to tie her shoes for her. Things were hectic and my dog needed to pee. We were not in any body’s way and seeing my dog never wandered more than 10 feet from my vehicle, I thought it would be okay to let him out for a leak.

When I looked up at you and smiled despite the cacophony in my car, you coldly informed me that this park had a leash law. I immediately apologized to you. Concurred with you and grabbed the leash of my seat, called my dog over to me, clicked it on him and continued to hold him by me, on leash, while I finished tying my kids sneaker, one handed. The other hand, if you didn’t notice, was being pulled on by my 85 pound Siberian Husky.

I still felt you presence. Actually it was my daughter who said to me, Why is that mean lady not leaving? I looked up and noticed your hair was the color of pumpkin with streaks of saffron. You bangs were thick around your eyes, which looked worn in, I recognized the look, I have it so often. You were tired and desperately tried to cover it with a wand of creamy concealer and some thick mascara. Your hunter green coat looked warm. The little dog on your passenger seat was yipping. I smiled at you again. And then why? Why. Why did you try to slice off my faith in humanity with your sharp and jagged words, your energy was burning hot ice, a fire-dipped tip of a knife.

You stopped me today with what I was doing. I will be reporting you to the forest service.

You didn’t even look at me, you looked somewhere of to the side and in front of you. I saw the paper and pen you were putting down next to you, no doubt scribbling my license # in hostile haste. And then you just drove away into the forested archway. My dog still pulling. My baby blood curdling. My three year old sobbing and sobbing about her milk saturated clothing. My five year old still balancing and now redressing. I watched your tail-end plastered with Obama 08 stickers disappear into the pines, your front end entering into a skin-chilling, heart-skip-a-beat hollow of beauty, of dancing ferns and chocolaty earth. A place almost impossible to be mad, or grumpy, at least for me. I hope your drastically bitter-self found some peace in there.

As for me, we just left. Granted, we had spent the morning packing for a picnic we planned on having in that particular spot. There are so many little fairy coves the girls love to eat and play in right at that park. We had dried apples. Pumpkin bread with butter smashed into it. Homemade burnt granola. Whole yellow delicious apples from our tree. A hunk of cheese. A jug of water. But because I have dealt with many spiteful people in my life, I have learned my lessons in Peacefully Withdrawing From Situations.

In my distant past, I might have tailed your ass down that road, inches from you car, hand on the horn until you stopped, thrown you The Bird, hanging my body out the window, cursing you up and down. But I didn’t. I have children now. And I know better.

I got Thunder The Dog in the car. Buckled the unbuckled ones back up. Kissed the baby and gave her a dolly and a whole apple to suck on. I turned around and went the opposite direction that you drove.

I would have really enjoyed a picnic there with or without your presence. But I felt space was needed to simmer out the electrifying energy we exchanged. For whatever reason our Karma had collided and I sensed that a picnic down the road by the river would have been the best choice.

I was already having a real shitty morning, lady. It was only Day Two of my self-imposed House Arrest Experiment, which for financial and psychological reasons I committed myself to staying home or going nowhere I couldn’t walk. Barely 48 hours later I was failing miserably. Interesting and sad how three small children in a house without an Out can drive one close to psychosis. I had already: grabbed my oldest daughters skinny white arm to tightly that morning and pulled her away from the sister she was torturing, yelled at the tortured one one way too loud for yelling way too loud, and then I dropped my french press and the glass shattered and all I could think was: No Coffee. And hen to top it off, I snapped at the baby for screaming on the ground, crying to me, while I was trying to clean up shards of glass. Yes, I was at a low point. I could not just be with them in my house. And so I thought: Picnic! At Silver Lake Park! Hell with the home confinement. It’s local at least! And I won’t spend any money except for gas (I did. I bought 2 steamers and a coffee on the way there). And my inner-knowing mixed with some mama guilt had led me down that beautiful little valley off of Mt. Baker Highway and somehow I was led to you. Or you to me. Or both.

While we drove the other way to our next picnic spot, I was among a chorus of WHY’S? [why was she so mean? Why was she going to tell on you? Why are we leaving?] I muttered under my breath more in shock than angry why was she such a fucking bitch?

What mama, what did you say?

Light bulb.

So for you, I answered them the best I could, trying to explain why, for no apparent reason, people where just mean.

She was mad because Thunder was off his leash. She might have been having a sad day. I think maybe that was it. She was sad and sometimes that makes you sound mad and sometimes when you are mad you just get mean with people. We should just send her some love and then have a good picnic and be as kind as we can to each other, K?

And then my daughter, my five year old, who twists and turns to get new views of the world every moment, says to me, Mama, I’m going to send her my rose. An she puts her hands, cupped up to her her heart and she pushes them forward just a bit, offering her harvest out to the world, to YOU.

She passed you her rose. We hope you got it. And we hope you passed it on to someone else.

Love,

The frazzled lady in the Gray Sienna Minivan with the gorgeous and loud children and one pretty chill dog.

***

We are big fans of the Icelandic outfit, Gus Gus and Mia’s current favorite ranking video is Moss, by Gus Gus. Check it out and you’ll see some rose passing.

Getting old is hell.  That’s what my father used to say. Now I know what he meant.

Oh ma.  Old is a state of mind.  So is hell.

My heart closes with these words stinging it.  They are just words but I inflate them with defeat, death, fear.

Silence falls within the wireless pathways that connect us from one corner of the country to the other.  I change the subject, perk up my voice, heart attempting to open back up.

So.  Now that it’s all done.  How is it different, how are you different?  What’s changed?

Hhmm.  I don’t…know. Let’s see.  She thinks. You know how I used say ‘don’t sweat the small stuff?’

Yup.  All the time.

Now I say, don’t sweat the big stuff either.  It’s all stuff.  Nothing is worth sweating over.  

She is completely full of it. Fluorouracil, Calcium Leucovorin, Folic Acid, Oxaliplatin.  This specific cocktail of Cancer Destroying drugs swoosh throughout her body fluids and kill everything in it’s path that might be an invader.  As it searches for cancer, it knocks her whole system down so low, she loses all strength to grip the ground and get back up.  She has been on the underside for the past three months, it consumes her, there is nothing else besides her cozy chair, a few sips of water a day, a bit of soup, maybe a scrambled egg, her favorite shirt: I‘m On Chemo, What’s Your Excuse?, her book of meditations and her dry skin salve.  She has just completed her twelfth session of chemo.  The little box that was zipped inside a fanny pack and sat on her lap is gone.  No more will it infuse her body with the liquid army via a port, that was inserted under skin, just above her collar bone.  Her doctor said twelve was the magic number and she made it there.  Yet her body is now a vessel holding it within, it still lives in her, she is filled up to the brim with it. 

Nothing worth sweating ma, except all that chemo inside you.  Sweat that all out, okay?  We need to get you weekly massages and into a sauna.  A sweat lodge!  That’s what you need!

I can feel her smile 2500 miles away.  Oh please! Love you.  Gonna go rest, hopefully tomorrow I will feel better.

***

How are you today?

Uh, I think I pushed myself a bit.  Cleaned down under the sink and changed all the sheets.  I just couldn’t stand it anymore.  I can’t wait to clean my house again, MY way.

Everybody that has helped my mother out in this journey,  cooking and cleaning, has undoubtedly not lived up to her standards.  She is grateful, that is obvious.  Impressed?  Not one bit.  My mother is holds the torch and nobody can wipe a surface clean or vacuum a floor or dust wood furniture like she could. 

You gotta take it easy.  Just let your body rest. So ma. You’re all done.  Doesn’t it feel good?

I am fishing for anything positive.  I can hear her voice holding her pain, her exhaustion.  I can hear her voice holding the sickness.  She owns it now, it’s her card to play.  I can’t force her to get over it, force her to forget the pain she has been in or the pain that still lingers.

I still have the PET Scan and the colonoscopy to go through.  I am not looking forward to those, but they’ll tell us if anything is left.  There is no way I can go through another six months of this.  

My heart closes again.  I want celebration!  Cartwheels!  I want chants and cheers from her:  D-O-N-E!!!! A-W-E-S-O-M-E!!!  I’m awesome!  I’m done with this shit!  I’m cancer free!

Six months?  NO way! Ma, you’re good.  I know you are.  Of course you are going to feel shitty for a while, you’re filled with the chemo, but it’s just the chemo that feels bad, not YOU, not you, ma.  You’re good.  Your good, I promise.  The cancer is gone, I know it is.

And yet her body tells it’s truth.  She is exhausted.  Eight months of poison. Her 78 year old body endured [and survived] fevers and infections because of it, in and out of hospitals and on and off antibiotics.  She lost half her head of hair [luckily she stared out with a mane of a Lioness and never once had to put on her custom-made wig she named Stella].  She has lost over 20 pounds, 10 of those she ‘could’ loose, the other ten has chiseled her body into that of a thin twelve year old boy with full breasts.  Gloves have been needed to open and close the ‘fridge or when touching anything colder than room temperature from neuropathy.  She has a hole in her flesh where the tube drained into her, a scar across her belly, horizontal and vertical, where the knifes cut through her to reach and remove the mass of disease that formed inside her.

It’s just that I have faith, I do.  I have the same faith that she shared with me my whole life. There is no name to it, no verse nor god.  It’s just Faith. I found it when my life landed on the same ground as hers.  Sometimes I think that’s why I picked her, her undying faith in Love.  And now, I see little remnant of it.  How can I not have it now?  She is my mama.  I want my kids to have memories of her.  Damn her, now more than ever she needs its, I need it from her.

My heart closes in these moments when I talk to her.  It shuts down to hardened pit; uncomfortable and hot.  A door gets slammed and my shoulders hunch forward.  I get annoyed.  I want to tell her to get over it, get over the fact that she is sick and she might just get better.  Her illness has been a vehicle for being heard.  Her whole life, she was the listener.  These past 8 months, since she has been diagnosed with cancer of the Ileum, had the surgery to remove the tumor and endured the chemotherapy, she  has finally been heard, been taken care of . For the first time ever, she was the center of concerned.  It was always her being consumed by all of us.  Now that it is all done, I wonder if she fears the roles will be reversed, and we expect her in some why to give the way she always has. 

I see my mother holding the weakness tighter that holding potential strength.  My hearts shuts down not because I judge her journey.  My heart shuts down because I am petrified to lose her.  My heart closes  because I know I will, eventually.  She will die. Not now, but someday.  There is a part of me that longs to hear her say, I’m back, baby, mama’s here, mama’s for you.  Come on up in my lap and let me rock you.  But it’s not for her to say anymore.  It’s my job now.  I say that to my own kids, and in a different language, I must now say it to her now, my mother.  Role reversal.  Something I am not sure I am ready for yet.  There is that book Mothering the Mother, the one about holding a new mother while birthing.  But how do you Mother your Mother, pre-death?

In eight months my mother went from hopping on planes, visiting her kids all over the country, helping me out with my babies and toddlers and moving to being old.  And sick.  And vulnerable.

So when you come out here, I want you to stay at least three weeks.  That way we can get down to Seattle for a few and have time to explore some Islands.

We’ll see.  We’ll see how I feel.  I still have a couple months to wait this out, hopefully I will get better.

Heart: Closes.  You are better.  The chemo needs to leave your system.  When that happens you’ll be shock at how amazing you feel. You won’t always feel this way.  I cling to this thought.  Maybe it’s not fair.  Maybe she needs me to say how much it all sucks still.  And I have, I’ve done it.  And now I am over it, I am over my mother being sick.  I want her to be over it, too. And silently in my heart I know I have to remain unattached to her, her life.  She may not be here next week, next month.  Maybe I’ll get her for a full five more years, maybe even ten.  She comes from a family with multiples that live to almost 100.  Perhaps she will even outlive me.  Living and dying are unpredictable.  But for this moment, I need to feel like she is well.  It is my vision for and I won’t let that go until somebody, some test,  tells me differently.  

When I was little and I used to pray at night.  I’d pull the covers over my head and clasp my hands together and I’d  beg god, mary, jesus, saint jude, all the angels, that my parents would stay alive until I was at least thirty which at the time seemed really old, assuming by then I’d have done all I needed to do.   I thought this was a lot to ask, not sure if they could ever make it to seventy.  I had understanding very early on that they were older than the parents of my peers.  They had me late in life.  They could have been my grandparents.  So the fact that I have had my mother this long,that she walked me down the aisle at my wedding, she sat outside my first daughters birth and heard me scream as I pushed her out, that she held my babies when they were moments old, gave them their first baths,  first real haircuts, bought them their bought them their first pair of underwear,  I guess all that makes me really lucky.  And blessed.  And for now I wait and live with that.

you are right beside me, swaddled in your new-to-you blanket.  you snore quietly, as quietly as a snore can be.  i just finished nursing you back down to slumber.  while you rested at my chest drinking milk,  i rested my nose atop your fuzzy head.  i sniffed it in deeply and it smelled like the dirt of our lives; playing next me while i prune rose bushes, eating grass as i dig up lavender, rolling in the fallen leaves as we gather apples.  you smell like the earth after a slow and light rain mixed with a gust of air.  i remember when the smell of my insides slowly left the top of your head and faded into the sweet smell of Baby.  The sweet smell of Baby is now fading into the grittier scent of You, a person, whole and complete with their own aroma. You smell like eight months on an indian summer day after sucking down plums while we sat at the park and dug deep into the gravel.  I could keep my nose there forever, smelling you, but typing these words did pull me away for a short moment.   for you, for you, i want to write.

today you turned eight months old.  how that happened i won’t know.  how you even got in me and out of me and now crawling and climbing up stairs, doesn’t really matter.  but here you are, my roley poley little Dove, all chubbers and squishy, squealy and silly.  you pull yourself up and you are fast.  i turn my head for a moment and back again and a big clump of white dog fluff hangs from your mouth.  thunder lies next to you quietly, didn’t make a sound when you stole a handful from his shedding back side.  tonight you ate your first real meal.  orange and purple carrots from Mama’s Garden steamed and pureed with some cooked quinoa, blended creamy. You ate from a silver dish and we handed you an old silver baby spoon which you flung across the room [the 3 year old and the five year old gasped in delight, zadie! glad they aren’t the only ones who like to throw things in passion] and used your hands to scoop it up and smear it around your mouth area. You liked it. We think. You screamed in glee.  Pounded the table with open hands. Let out a fart. Drooled. Said: DAAADAAADAAAAAAADEEE. And looked at us and smiled. Toothless still. A few more handfuls in the bowl and to the face and you yelped the special yelp you do only for me as you lunged from dada’s arms into mine. Food is okay, but you still like mama milk best.

I kept thinking what I wanted to write to you tonight, but I have been so tired i almost didn’t.  Your mama is tired in general and its a good thing, an open hand and heart kind of tired, a kind of tired that allows me to ask how i can fully be in it.  But tired still the same, so forgive me if i don’t want to pres shift in this.  i am also tired of the computer screen, the light give me a headache. Yet I dragged myself here just to tell you this: As much as it’s nice to list all the cute things you do and say i’d rather just watch it happen and so I thought, one word, what is one word for you.

And in popped this one: dharma.

Isn’t that a good word to pop in one’s head when they are thinking of you? i’d say.

I’m no Buddhist, I dip my cone in all flavors so perhaps the word dharma to appear before my mind’s eye makes sense but i dont know how. Dharma is what is love and what is loving. Dharma is the spirit and the heart. Dharma is the way and the path to the way. Dharma is unity and support. Dharma is holding us all. Dharma is the seeking to the knowing. Dharma is evolution. Dharma is truth. Dharma is union.

Zaida Echo Sklya Dove. You are dharma. Hhhmmm, that sounds so nice.

And so it is, you are eight months. Turn that over on it’s side and it’s infinity. And that’s how I feel right now, like I will have infinity to share with you the love I have. And for now, I am tired, so I will go to sleep while nuzzling my nose atop you head and curl my body around your own, listening to your gentle snoring of a lulabye. Thank you for sleeping right next to me [and for the whole night through these past few days!], infusing in me these ancient things I know so little about. My tiny little teacher, I love you.

 *

here are a couple photos your big sister snapped the other day.

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