misplaced mama

ONE.

The dawn has awoken to your morning calls and the dusk has been called upon by your hungry bedtime wails. My little bird of prophecy and peace, of sensuality and fire; you have traveled around the entire sun. You have felt the harsh air of winter on your newborn cheek, and smelled the fertile soft earth after the spiring rain. You have napped at the banks of the river on warm sunny summer days. You have picked apples off trees strapped to my back under the sepia sky of Autumn. My third daughter, Lovey Dovey, you with many, many names: Happy First Birthday.

* * *

Dear World, I am choked in my throat and my arms tingle to just reflect on her beauty and the beauty she opens my eyes to. Contagious, stellar, warming, from above and below. We indeed must live in a brilliant place, a peculiar yet undoubtedly settled and thoughtfully crafted world right in the middle, a perfect place for a mother and child to hold each other, noticing the love and wonder of new life; trees, jellyfish, humans, birds, the blooms of a borage plant, turtle shells, the cocoa bean, moss, a baby’s small toe. It’s a wonderful place. So many teachings and comfortable nooks to rest our heads. This baby that now sleeps next to me as I type is proof that our hearts are all worthy of spilling open and receiving that pure nectar of prana. When I look at her I have faith in me. In you. She is not beyond the wonder in any of us and although it’s sometimes hard to notice my own soul seeds. so sweet, sweet enough to create such life, one sniff behind her neck and I am brought back to myself. We are all worthy of as much love as this small daughter of mine attracts. We all are. She taps me on the shoulder calls me to dig into my dusty heroine archives and pull out that never-ending scroll that holds record of how perfect our soul’s song and dance truly is.

Her spirit has filled our ravenous hunger like a hearty peasant soup, a colorful and wild seafood pasta tossed with only the finest oil of olive, a crusty outside chewy inside baguette, a bowl of farm fresh lemon custard, tender berries of blacks and blues and reds in big hand made bowl. She sparked our drive on the open road and cheered us on as we packed our boxes, manifesting movement for our nomadic bones. She held me tightly as I slept in a sand invested camper and peed all night long from an open metal door out on to forest floors, Come on mama, it’s an adventure. She calmed my nerves when I couldn’t sleep at the edge of land and rock, worrying about where I was and where I was moving to and why. Don’t worry mama, just take me to where the whales swim. And as each day passes she continues to instill in us a faith for our creative purpose. All things are possible she whispered in my ear the night I found out she lived within me somewhere under my heart. I come to your home because I want to watch you weave all the passions into One. She has taught us to shapeshift into parents of three daughters. There is nothing less than magic (or insanely wild) in that.

I pull her in between my arms devour her when I can. These days her protocol is to kick fast and free in boundless exploration on hands and knees, like flashes of lightning she is off to touch the stones or sparkly multi-faceted crystals collected by the older girls or to pull on the dog’s tail. She surfs the couch and the chairs to find ways to rip leaves off the plants or grab handfuls of potting soil or to get to the garbage underneath the kitchen sink. A small scrap of anything on the floor never goes unnoticed by her little fingers and curious mouth. These times are precious. And they move fast, as fast as the flow down river after days of rain. A note to me in 20 years: Don’t ever forget the glisten in her eyes when her face is above yours and you are looking up at her, her seductively long lashes shelter the shiniest, darkest, deepest secrets of your own soul.

She is ethereal and unformed, transparent and bodiless spirit. She is fierce and dwells in flesh, hot blooded, sharp nailed, chunky toothed, fast hands pulling at my long knotted hair, my peacock feather earrings, the saggy skin on my cheek. She is all these and more. Mellow and easy, sleepy and demanding, hectic and still. Alive. She is this body which lingers upon dainty and perfectly sized, a full backside and curvy thighs, muscular arms and quite possibly the most exactly angled toes atop the most graceful arch on earth. She grows this skeleton form here with me, this whole family. I think she really likes us.

* * *

Thirteen big juicy moons have shined down on you and thirteen dark moons have held you through the mystery of the shadow. This is a celebration. Of you. At night I crawl into bed next to you, pressing our foreheads together, our noses touching, our breath blending and I suck it in deep. I watch your eyelids form quarter moons, and your lips and cheeks deepen to apothecary rose as sleep becomes you. I can talk of all you are and what you do, but I do not know you in fullness, not in the way I crave to, in a way I never will. That’s not how it works. But the chance that each day I am gifted with knowing you a tiny more keeps my eyes and heart open beyond the screams and the spills, the diaper struggles and the exhausted pre-sunrise scratches in the face. The threeness of your placement in the family is beginning to fade from the confusing maze, the head smacking into walls and the many moments huddled in cobwebbed corners to that of a rhythmic tide, a knowing that I can do this. In the moments when I feel as if I am being pulled in by the undertow, I am reminded of your soft mystery, a quiet gift from somewhere Out There. The girl who brought me home, held my hand as I walked through the basement of my soul and who sat on my hip as we creaked up the rickety staircase toward a door that held even more darkness behind it. You are the one that said, go on mama, open it up.

You were born on the cusp of night and day during the loudest dance of wind and rain, the Mother of Birth and Death were having a soundclash, with skirts of skulls rattling from every corner, reminding me that with birth comes death and with death comes birth and we can’t do one without the other. The are the same face equally divided. And while you brought the beautiful gift of darkness as you emerged, you also brought the desire to truly heal, bare down to my soul’s bones, in the spacial marrow that connects me to all life. It is you who handed me the key to my own ancient story; once locked in a cave and scribbled with sharp vixen nails, I have finally found the eyes to read. There is a misconception that we need to bring Light into the Dark all the time. But now I remember how to gather the Darkness from the Light. I am finally on the path of being a whole woman; scraping away every last fiber of who I was, ripping off the comfortable ego, which was worn for show and pride, draped over me like a silk shawl, beautiful and worthless. I am able to say now: I am not just a mother. I am a woman, a wild animal, gardener who sows the dark seed and the light who enables it to bloom. I am the drum beat of my own heart. And all this, these words I write, you have given me.

It is no coincidence you were born only two days before Imbolc, where Goddess Brigit stands at the middle gateway between the frost of winter and the blossom of Spring. She gifts us with primal healing and glistening poetry. You are no doubt my talisman, just a glance your way, your presence on my hip or back or at my breast reminds me of my path: these words are meant only to heal.

I hold you up to the world and say Welcome to this New Year.

I hold you up to The Dark One, Kali Ma and give thanks for the firestorm of destruction that swept through me that night you chose to come. I give thanks for those months and months of postpartum rage and depression, for such raw abandon of everything so I could sit in front of my soul’s hearth and listen to the flames that were never less than a blaze. I give thanks for the opportunity to just burn and burn until now where I stand, nothing but a naked skeleton, bones missing, crushed, in piles on the ground in form of pure ash. Dead. Ready to ask: Who am I now? Where is my heart?

I hold you up to, Kwan Yin, Mother Goddess of many names, who wears the cloak of Compassion and Light for the rebirth of a wounded body and heart. I give thanks for her warm arms that held on to me when I was almost too tired and weary to hold on to you. I ask her to surround you in all your moments of weakness and strength.

I hold you up to the Dove, the bird that has shown it’s flight to me since you were just small buds of hands and feet and fast little heart-drum. It makes sense to me now, knowing this simple white spirit of flight has represented sexuality, creativity and holds the gateway to the feminine innerworld since the beginning story of ourselves. Dove sings the mourning coo of what has been while it wakes us up to the brilliance of what is now, the newness of the dawn.

I hold you up, Baby Girl, I introduce you to this massive world and call out your Name, your spirit name, which I hold in my heart as a secret and whisper only into your ear at night. It is your power name, for only you and the winds will know it. I hope it will ride through the air deliver the message to the heavens that you are here and safe, you have arrived into yourself.

I hold you up to your Spirit Guides, those magical beings who I bow in great thanks and honor. They have chosen you, they are by your side as I take on new journeys to fill my creative soul, embarking on new adventures. In those hours I may not be there by your side, know they always are.

I hold you up to Coyote, Great Trickster, in honor of the laughter, the absurdity of this journey, of all the falls and spills and ridiculous mess we make daily. To laugh it all off, this gift, I hope is bestowed upon you, my giggly, silly little girl.

I hold you up to Great Spirit, to The Mystery which is the source of of this every-giving sweet Love and yell at the top of my lungs: THANK YOU. There is nothing more to say about that.

And I give thanks to you, for letting me peak in on this life of yours, because it is all yours. I am only here because you picked me. Just show me what you need .

* * *

She doesn’t walk, but she sure talks: mama, Dada, light, thank you, thunder, moon, uh-oh, uh-uh, that, agua.

Her five teeth love eating. Anything I put in front of her. Quinoa drenched in sesame oil being a recent favorite. And her first taste of birthday cupcake (lemon vanilla with coconut rose frosting) was a big hit.

She is the best dancer we’ve made yet.

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the moment after I caught you.  mama loves you so much she’ll share this with the world.

and only a week before that, this is how you made me feel…

I love you Zaida Echo Skyla Dove Papaya Spiral Rock.  Infinity.