fear of flying.

July 21, 2008

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.

Unless I am using my  own wings, I just don’t like it. I do it, it’s a necessary ‘evil’ in my life. But I much rather be on the ground or on a boat. I like feeling time pass as I travel. Not zipping by.  I like to see things at a human speed, the trees, the road, the people.  I like to enter new timezones with some warning, watching the transition from forest, to plains to desert, to sea.  I don’t like the dreaminess of the clouds below me, not knowing what I am above.  Bottom line: I want more control.  I want to be able to stop off at an exit and hit a greasy dinner for a grilled cheese and a shake and a take a photo of a random sign and know that I am in This Town now.  And flying tricks me into a new time, a time that my body rejects.

About a week before take off, the anxiety assaults every part of my life; wake time, dream time, in between time. Before I had kids, I just popped pills and did whiskey shots. It was the one time meditation never worked. Nope. Good old drugs were the only thing that settled me into that seat without clawing the strangers flesh next to me. Once I am drunk, I didn’t care I was 20,000 feet above the earth.

But I can’t very well get trashed with three kids in tow, one of them breastfeeding. So my soultion has been an OCD-esque ritual and visualization. 

I get on the plane. Settle the kids. I close my eyes and face my palms up. I watch the plane in my mind’s eye and surround with light, a light that I see coming from the inner most core of the universe, not just any old white light, folks, but The Light. The Light that protects all things from all things, the light that never ceases, never dims, never dies. ANd once the plane is illuminated, bright as the stars, it;s time to call down the winged folk.

Arch-Angel Micheal is the head man at the nose of the plane. He winks at me as he holds on to the front, tells me he has a good grip. He’s muscular and gorgeous and utterly doable. I imagine him to look like the hot one on Lord of The Rings. The blond hot one, not Viggo. His wings are massive and stark white. Then the beautiful goddess angels come on down with their iridescent wings. The head to either side of the plane and hold on to it’s wings, two for each wing.  These creatures are otherwordly, curved and ancient, crytal eyes and firey red hair.  The look at me and smile; don’t worry M, we have it, we’ll hold her steady for you. And finally the gender neutral being, this creature, wild and huge, my protector with scaley skin and flaxen hair, long nails, and 20 arms, just a wild colorful thing, takes the back end. I’ll never let go, it tells me, precious cargo.

And then take off. And I must say my prayer. If anyone, child or flight attendant, or person who knows me who happens to be on the same flight sitting behind me (this happened once) even tries to talk to me, they get firmly told to just wait, unles they want to die, until I am done with my prayer. My prayer is my own version of a childhood favorite, The Hail Mary:

Hail Mary, full of grace

We are thee

Blessed are those among women

And blessed is the fruit of thy womb

Holy Mary Mother of All

Hold us now and forever

Oooooommmmmmm

Blasphemous I know. But the original version just isn’t for me me anymore with all that sin and death and god talk.  I feel okay about switching it around. It’s my ritual, my flight, my fear. My prayer.

Last Wednesday I got on a plane in Bellingham and headed to Mesa, AZ with all three kids. I proceeded to the same thing once everyone was settled in the seat. I had Mia do the visuals with me, made it fun for her, never leading on to why I had angels come down and carry the plane. She just assumed that’s how planes must fly.  I’ll leave it to her father to explain engines and such.

And we were off.

Things didn’t feel right.

So I thought maybe it was because I was ready to drop of my two big girls in Arizona with family and leave them, taking the baby to NY with me. I was going to miss them. I don’t like being away from my girls, not even for a whole day let alone a whole week. A week is a very long time.  I left them one other time for a week, but they stayed home with their dad.  Maybe things felt uneasy because I know I had just begun the journey back to my hometown  to be with my mother, scared of how I was going to find her.  Two months had past since the last time I had seen her and her body was now three quarters filled with Chemo and perhaps the results would shock me; the hairlessness, the skin and bones, the red checks, the fatigue.

I felt tense, more tense than usual.

A man stood, ruffling through the overhead compartment, A flight attendant stood by with a concerned look on her face. She was glancing at the attendant that sat behind me (we were the very last seat on the plane, in front of the bathroom and the flight attendants seat). The man got what he was searching for in his bag, a small cardboard box, and he sat back down.

Another man got up. He walked to the bathroom (behind me) and on the way he smiled at Z. I smiled back. As he shut the door another man walked up to the bathroom to wait. He stood for a moment. The seat belt light went one. A flight attendant approached him. I felt her stress. Sir, I need you to wait for the bathroom in your seat, the caption has turned on the fasten seat belts. We’ll let you know when the bathroom is unoccupied.

He went back to his seat. The man in the bathroom comes out and sits down in his row, 6-7 seats in front of mine. I can easily see the back of his head, wrapped in religious garb, not sure but I am assuming, a Sikh.

Over the loudspeaker, before anyone could get up to know occupy the vacant toilet: Attention passengers, our lavatories are closed. They are both malfunctioning. We apologize, but nobody is to use the bathroom until further notice.

Mama, I gotta poop. Maaaamaaaa, I gotta poooooop.

Sweetie. Not now. I am concerned. I am intuitive. I feel the stress on this plane. I look around. Everyone else seems fine, happy, dandy.

I am concerned. I am intuitive. I feel the stress on this plane. I look around. Everyone else seems fine, happy, dandy.

I sit and wait. I am hyper aware of what the attendants are doing. Back and forth they travel down the aisle. Hushed phone calls. Whispers. One of them whispers to the man directly next to me across the aisle, a long haired from grunge town. He nods his head. He carries a slight, painted on smile across his face. Minutes pass. She whispers again to him.

Finally. What the fuck is going on? Perhaps I didn’t say the F word, holding Z in my arms, I tend not to swear, but the word rang in my voice. I knew something was up. I knew something felt wrong.

The attendant walks away. The man across from me ensures me all is okay, he is just has to keep an eye out for the bathroom, making sure nobody goes in it.

Oh. For a moment that sounded okay. Made sense. He’s back here next it with me. He can be a guard for the supposed over-flowing shit water.

More whispers. More walking. More hushed phone calls.

No, this is still not right. My whole body tenses. My heart is pounding. Mia is crying that her ears are “puffy”.

We seem to be about 2 or so hours into the flight. Only about a ½ hour to go.

I double check where the girls are, because where I am is not good. My palms are sweating. My throat is lumped. I have this bizarre smile on my face, plastered. In my heart, I know I am going to be okay, feel this deeply, but somewhere in between my heart and my head that feeling is shifted and I am quite sure this is it: we’re going down.

Mia is still complaining about her clogged ears, “puffy, mama! Yawning doesn’t work!” I pass her come. She seems pleased with this. Chew baba, chew the gum and your puffy ears will pop open.”

Sula is happily drawing her spirals on the pad of paper. Over and over again she draws little circular shapes, tiny, intricate. They remind me of the end of a fire dance, the small signatures that I spun just as the fire was going out. Somewhere between sand swirls and Sanskrit. I get lost in her spirals, wondering if these will last time I will see her draw. She looks up at me and smiles. And in her silly little voice reminds me, Mama I gotta go poo. I tell her the bathroom is still broken, but not to worry, soon.

I crank my body all the way around. I demand to know what going on.

The attendants look at each other. They look at me.

And then I hear a whole lot of words like: tipped off, suspicious activity, bomb scares, don’t worry, we stopped them, surprise landing, police, back door, arrests….
I look to the man across from me.  Is everything going to be alright, I more beg than ask.  Yeah, I hope so.  I think it’s just a bad case of profiling.  At least I hope it is.  I hope. They asked me to watch a man a few rows up, to see what he was doing with his hands, so far he just has them folded on his lap.  But he did have some kind of box earlier…

And all I could say was I will never fly again.

* 

And so to make a long story a bit shorter. We did a crazy-ass landing, heading down, and then back up and then straight back down. in silence, no warning, no friendly voice on the speaker telling us we were descending into the hot-ass desert with temperatures hot enough to cook a small baby. The back doors flew open and Police came storming on the plane, five darker skin men were arrested. The rest of the plane spoke in whispers, looking around, not knowing what was happening. We’re sorry about this, but due to unusual circumstances, please stay seated on the aircraft until we inform you it is safe to leave. Five men in cuff walk by me, I try to look in their eyes. If you are all innocent men, I am so sorry, so sorry for this humiliation. If you’re not and you want to hurt me and my kids, I’ll fucking kill you.

Twenty minutes later and 5 condoms, tied and filled with a little liquid were removed from the garbage of the bathroom that was directly behind my seat. Can my daughter go to the bathroom now? Yes, yes. Go ahead. As we squeeze back around them, I see they are wearing the gloves, holding on to the condoms.

As we squeeze back around them, I see they are wearing the gloves, holding on to the condemns.

Condoms?

Not just condoms.

I get it. I think. I’m just never flying again.

Ma’am, please don’t be scared to fly. We are in the business of keeping you safe. It’s our job.

Oh yeah, I get it. I get it. My whole body shaking as I try to get the kids off the plane and walk down the steps onto the runway. The air here is thick with heat, that long ago yet fimilar sensation of stepping into an oven; my breath has to deepen to fill my lungs, my eyes have to squint from the rays. I take on a whole new meaning of sweat.

Wow! It’s hot here, Mama!!! I’m so hot!

In somewhat of a state of shock, we begin our stay in the desert for a few days. The whole time I call the airlines to get information on what happened, what was in the condoms, who the men were. But there was no info to be given. I took upon the Anxious, The Scared, The Stressed. I felt like I was suffering post-trauma stress. I actually thought about renting a car and just driving me and the girls back home, back to my little safety net of a home; bright and yellow and filled with flowers and rivers streaming…and berries, all those berries! The light winds of the valley, the twinkling of sun bouncing of the green leaves and mountainsides, the mountains that surround and protect me…I wanted to go back. How quickly my No Fear and my I Don’t Give A Shit get erased by my utter humanness, my fragility, my need to stay alive.

I had to mine for the amount of trust I needed to continue on, climbing on four more planes until I was to finally be back home. If it wasn’t the thought of my mother waiting for me in her chair back in NY, I’d never stepped onto that plan going East. And if it wasn’t for the love and desire I had to be back with the big girls, I’d never would have stepped foot on that plane going back West. And that final ride, the thought of my home, here, my man…I just took a breath and got on it. My rituals done with more reverence and faith.

And so here is what Allegiant Air finally has to tell me: We couldn’t connect any of the men on the flight to the items found in the trash. As for the items (the condoms) found, we are still researching and getting information on that.

And so my questions are: extreme paranoia and racial profiling? A true threat to our lives? A huge mistake? A lesson for me to trust Fate; when it’s my time to crash, I just might.

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chemo.

July 11, 2008

 

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.

Comments (20)

real food.

July 5, 2008

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.

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10 minutes.

July 3, 2008
(Jena, here is what is what i get in 10 minutes. no edits.)
***
dont give a shit.
about anything except the sound of fire close to my ears and brushing against my flesh.  the way it felt when i spun between my legs and it heated up my crotch.  the way that when it hit my leg and my hip and even brushed my forhead it felt good, yes good.  i don’t give a shit that i spun fire, finally, after years of wishing, dreaming, longing to so, but i am totally a different person now that i have.  fire i love and respect.  i am the one who dips her toes close to the campfire, loving the feeling of the heat, the burn, the sting.  candles are always my invocation. 
driving down the highway which leads to my house, there is a small and ancient church that always has very non-offensive sayings on the sign board out front.  the day after i lit up,  it read:  Hear god’s voice this week. and i said  hot damn i did, oh i did and it was Fire twirling and swooshing and cracking one inch from ear.  it was the sound of chaos that quieted my mind, finally, finally, i heard god’s voice.  it was fire.
***
back to not giving a shit.  i don’t.  i didn’t give a shit that i only spun practice poi half-assed for a few months 2 years ago.  i didn’t care enough about my hair or my eyebrows or my clothes or my flesh not to do it.  i promise i’ll only spin circles i told my sister/friend/teacher.  even though she’s the one that brought over the jamaican rum, she pretty much knew it was an i don’t give a shit type of night she graciously handed over them over to me, told me how to light up and played pressed play on the ipod. 
earlier that day i decided not to gve a shit about anything. after my daughter thought it would be all fun and games if she took her kiddie broom and bang the handle into one of our fragile timepiece door windows until it smashed it through,  i decided not giving a shit was what i had to do.  after i screamed for a moment, yelled at her, explained to her about SAFETY AND DANGER and then i banned her from my space, i took upon the mantra which my friend had lent to me week before; i don’t give a fucking shit.  i didn’t give a shit that my house was covered in my orange shag carpet, smushed raisins, crumbled crackers and dirty dishes.  i didn’t give a shit that another day was taking place and i hadn’t tilled the rest of the garden and the kale was dying and the squash was burnt and dry. i didn’t give a shit that one more day had passed and i had not dragged the kids for a hike.  i didn’t give a shit that i only got 3 hours sleep the night before.  i didn’t give a shit about not having any money in the bank.  i stopped giving a shit about wanting anything, making anyting building anything, writing anything.  I couldn’t give two shits if i ever wrote another word again.  i didn’t ive a shit that i had to get on a plane once again when usually i freak out about flying, i didn’t give a shit that i was overwhelmed with three girls whose estrogen fills our home like an smoldering volcano.  i didn’t give a shit how i look.act.eat.dress.talk.think.clean.create.dress.wear my hair. I didn’t give a shit what anybody thinks of me. 
I. Don’t. Give. A. Shit. What. Anyone. Thinks. Of. Me (good or bad).
FREEDOM.
that’s big.  and i still don’t even give a shit that it’s big.  who fucking cares?  it’s just life.
and i didn’t give a shit about being nice anymore either, nice like when you want to be honest, like that kind of not nice.
when i expressed this new found attitude to my husband the other day, when i told him i could care less if we make it through any of this he called me a nihilist.  and at that moment my not giving a shit was a bit nihilistic.  but it’s not now.  now i don’t give a shit because i’ve stopped judging myself and everything around me.  i stopped beating myself up.  i’ve stopped wanting anything, really, except the feeling of wide open wild freedom of not giving a shit.  and wow, i can’t even tell you how much more love i feel, how much i love, how much better it feels to be loved.  i don’t give a shit with an open heart and a smile on my face.  i don’t give a shit and i walk different, like i am happy to walk.
i
 almost started to give a shit today when a close family member, pregnant with her first, began riding the slippery slope of medical intervention and as a birth professional i almost began giving a shit, but i sopped.  and it’s not about not loving her or caring for her or wanting her to birth empowered.  no, i don’t give a shit about what i am suppose to believe or teach or say;  it’s her path, her choices, her baby,  her story, her experience NOT MINE and i hold her where she is at, knowing this is hers, and it’s what she needs.  i don’t give a shit about what i know and don’t know.  i don’t give a shit about dogma.
and all those terms we hear people throwing around surrender, let go, let it be, go with the flow, give in, release…oh the hell with them because what do they really mean?  just don’t give a shit.
just love freely and loosely.  hold the happy with the sad and the sad with the happy and love them both the same or hate them both the same or feeling nothing about any of them. breath something new in with each breath andthrow that out the window with the exhale.  and do something that you are totally petrified to do. like play with fire really close to your bare skin.  grow dreadlocks. fly a tiny plane over the islands.  jump out of it.  let go of your kids and let them be. take a shit in a public bathroom.  use (GASP) disposible daipers, hire a (gasp) babysitter, let your belly hang over your pants and don’t hide it.  invite friends over to your totally disgusting messy house and don’t you dare clean a thing.  walk outside naked (or with a big boots and a boa) and dance like sisha or something like that.  right now.  go on.  i dare you.


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five months.

June 30, 2008

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Nothing like a chubby baby, skin to skin, sweaty and sticky, giggly and drooling, hanging out on the banks of the river with her mama.  For the past few days  we’ve been celebrating you or something (maybe summer); bbq’s, beers, chocolates, pies, homemade honey rose lemonade and lots of music.

You wake me up each morning by kicking me.  You scoot your little body horizontal in bed and then use those feet of yours to kick away against my belly/chest area.  When I finally give in, open my eyes, look at you; you flash me a grin larger than the sky.  You sing morning songs, greeting songs, songs that prepare me nice and early for a long day ahead.

You are on the cusp of crawling and getting your teeth.  We hold you and release you through these transitions.  Each moment you prove to be a strong soul with a voice loud enough to go with it.  You communicate your needs clearly with screams and squeals and interesting sounds from your source.  You "official" name got lengthened and now I finally feel right about it, you are those sounds when they roll off my tongue. You did get a bit lucky.  Sula still thinks we left in her other pick: squealer (skyla is also Sula’s choice.  She insisted since your birth that was your name.) Tomorrow, when you officially turn five months, I am heading to city hall.  It’s time we got you a birth certificate and a passport.  What a big girl!

We aren’t sure, but we think you may be the cutest baby we’ve ever seen.  Dada thinks you like him best. Did the other girls smile at me like that?  I don’t think so….

You desperately want to eat what’s on my plate.  At three months you grabbed pizza crust from my hand and tried to shove it in your mouth.  Now your big thing is watermelon.  You are dying for a piece and you leap out of my arms in hopes to steal some from the table. No such luck, sister.  No food for you.  Not for another month, at the least.  Show me those bottom two teeth and we’ll talk about it.

You don’t sleep anymore.  You’d much rather suck on my nipple while you play the drums on my chest or arms.  You also love to play with your feet and hands, suck on your toes, and clasp your fingers together like you are praying and grab at my necklace and try to stuff it in your mouth.

Your baby hammock is still a life saver.  You hang on the Gravenstein apple tree in it.  You become hushed, your eyes wide as they explore the leaves and branches that dance above you.  I imagine you look at the shapes in the clouds and remember a time not long ago before your skin was out in this earth air.  The starlings sing and your head moves to their song as you are bounced and cradled.

I thought you were my paci-baby.  You used to suck on that thing to no end, taking it in the middle of the night, happily. You’re starting to realize it’s not my boob and figuring out you like my boob better and pretty much you get what you want.  All night restaurant is now open.  Paci is now a toy, you pop it in and out of your mouth, look at its ingenius invention and toss it a foot away from you.

Your bootey is totally like mine, cellulite a bit of boom-boom to go with it.  Your ears are still elf, mine as well.  It looks to be so our your constantly dirty little fingernails.  But your eyes?  Damn.  Those come from another realm, really.  People come up to us and stare…those eyes….

You love the outdoors, walking and laying and playing under trees.  Anywhere your sisters roam  is where you want to be.  Your eyes scan the room for those girls, smile big when you get a glimpse of one as they flash by.  You are a sister.  Their baby sister. You fill that spot well.  To imagine I wasn’t sure how it was going to work.  They adore you. 

I’ve finally gotten through alot of the chatter in my over-worked mind and am listening and seeing your birth with original and unbiased senses.  All I can say now is what once was clogged in me is now open, a funnel, a channel.  You blew right through me, Z, and while you did that, you did once incredible clean-up job. 

It’s been kinda a crazy rush.  My pregnancy with you, the birth, buying a home so soon after you were born.  But you’ve led us the whole way here, we are quite sure of it.  Your spirit roams and guides.  You are just a little baby, so apparently loving each moment of your newness, not trying to be old or wise, you coo like it’s your first time.  But we know it’s not.  You led us here, I don’t know how it happened, but it’s obvious.  You wanted this around you,  you bask in your new garden of eden, your lush paradise full of berry bramble and apple trees, mossy fields and glacier feed rivers, your protective peaks, and spirit birds that soar close by you all the time.  This is your home, Nooksack Land, holy land.  We all feel it. Little girl, thank you so.  Thank you for bringing us all home.  I feel found after so much searching and waiting and watching. No more misplaced, just found; by you, by love, by the god damn greenest scene I have ever been part of. We celebrate these first five months, just slowly peaking our head out from the post partum labyrinth, ready to come up for some sweet, salty, sunny air.

Happy day girl. Thank you.  Thank you. Thank you.  I am starting to see who you are, the person underneath the cute baby and wow.  You’ve made me a bit speechless, overwhelmed with love for who you are and why on earth I get to hold you while you grow.  We all love you.

kisses,

mama

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fire.

June 28, 2008

I’ve been initiated by fire.  Here is how I spent Thursday evening:

This is something I’ve been wanting to for at least a decade.  Interesting, I have never really practiced, here and there, half-assed with practice poi.  But the opportunity arose, and my teacher was hesitant (one should really practice intensely before lighting up) but we were in a I don’t give a shit sort of mind which is perfect when you dance with fire. 

Sexy.  Powerful.  Fierce.  A fire troop of magnificant women are taking over the world.  Wanna join?

My muse has returned.

(the youtube screen of our video doesn’t seem to be showing up.  click here if it you can’t see it either._

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to be.

continued with words.  soon. fierce. but for now, some snaps of my teachers.

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these teachers expect a lot, but they are the best i’ve ever had.

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fresh.

May 26, 2008

Zaida, Zadie, Zazzle, Z, ZaZa…

Coos, laughs, squeals, grabs, marathon nurses (yet looks up in my eyes every few sucks, just to make sure I’m stll there and throw me a fab toothless smile) sleeps from 7pm until midnight until 5am until 7pa.  Up for the morning rush and then back to bed for a few hours.  Folks, I think I finally made a sleepy one.  Her Kanoe Baby Hammock has been an awesome cuddle for long stretches of sleep.  She actually screams at me when she’s tired until I put her in there.  Once in, she sighs, turns her head, and passes out.  At first I was confused? A baby that didn’t want to be nursed down and then held the whole time while asleep?  Huh?  Something strange and terrible must be afoot. Then I was sad, why does she want to be put down to sleep?  What ever will happend the indentation in my forearm from holding the other two for the first year of their lives? And then I was like, yeah, ok, awesome.  She wants some space. She’s giving me some, too. 

***

Easy, sweet and chubby with multi-layed thighs.  Coming into her own voice, her own unique and bold personality, laughing out loud and singing along with her sisters. Our clan is being transformed and the kinks are smoothing out. I feel so lucky so be her mama, to have carried her with such authority and sensuality,  to have birthed her with such a wickedly obvious force of creative passion and healing, and to mother her with a whole new page; wisdoms scrawled across it in a hurry, but wisdoms all the same.  The post partum business is a very powerful teacher and I am learning that when the monsters meet me in the alley, all I have to do it look them in the eye, pay my respect, bow down to their guidance and surrender to the prickly and achey discomfort until I can transform it to hurt so good.  Now that I am lifting above all the anger and saddness and totally awful fatigue of depression, I feel grateful.  How the hell could I have gotten to this place, this lighter side of things, this empowerment of Mama X 3 if the darkness hadn’t prepared me?  Yoga means yoke or unite, it remains my one tangible path to health.  This practice is to unite both the Dark and the Light, accepting how they intertwin like the snakes from the caduceus (which really reminds me of the Kundalini energy climbing the spine) until I can bring them eye to eye, not  judging the differences between the two, nor weighing either in importance, because they are the same.  When that moment happens the serpant becomes the wings and for split second I take flight.

All three of my chidren have spoken to me through their births, bringing me such unique gifts besides their cherished presence in my life. Mia’s birth unexpectedly threw me unto the Warriors Path, birthing me into Teacher and capturing the sacredness of the everyday.  Sula entered in and reminded me that the path of service  is to open the heart and pour out love, listening to all our stories and holding each one with equal weight sans judgement.  And Zaida, my newest birth, so fresh in the mind yet far enough way now that I can see it’s light: Freedom. I am free.

***

We are moving again.  Very close to where we are now; but outside the city where the rivers party together and the organic farmers orgy on fertile soil.  We sit on a half acre and give thanks. A small house, not by the world’s standards, but by our culture not many mothers want to cram five people in 1200 square feet, but for us, it’s perfect.  It enables us to let go and cleanse out, opeing up for freshness.  There is so much to be said about this and I will eventually begin this journey of words once we are all moved in and after a few wabi sabi sunday’s slurping coconut popcycles and watching for rainbows and searching for spiders and splashing in creeks and tending the garden.  I laugh when I think there was a time when I found it bizarre to have moved here without really knowing why.  Or that I doubted this move when we arrived homeless or when the sun hid for three months. But I see now, I was initiating myself and my experiences are like sacred text. And now that I know we can do anything, I can forget all the stories of how I got here and just be here. I’m honored to share as life unfolds at Three Sisters Mini Farm.  Besides the sisters, the tall trees and clean air and snowy peaks are sure to be my teachers and as they fill me in on stuff, I’ll pass on as I can.

Until then, some moments.

When I turn down my street, my breath becomes me and I feel home in my body.

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Some of the yard, and the spot in back by the shed…that’s where misplaced mama’s writing studio shall soon stand.

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Finally resting.

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Two of the three sisters after a picnic of strawberries and asparagus.

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One love.

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Z.

May 17, 2008

She radiates light.

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3ish months.`

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sex. (a rant i will regret posting no doubt)

May 4, 2008

When I was contacted by Current TV last month to be part of a project involving the dictation of sex diaries in a nifty little digital-cam I asked, why?


Why on earth would anyone be interested in the sex life of an 8 week post-partum mother of three?  A post-partum depressed new mother of three? What sort of sick show is this?

Our viewers are just about on the cusp to commit, to marriage and perhaps parenthood.  This can give them a taste of what it’s really like.
***
In glimpses here and there, for the last month, I’d share into a small digital camera. I’d go on walks through the woods when the big girls snoozed in the double stroller and the littlest one bound tightly around my front, drooling into my cleavage and  I would talk into a camera  while hiking up a hill. Sometimes in the car a thought would come to me and I’d pop open The Flip, knowing the hum of the road passing underneath would be heard on the recording making myself less than audible.  At night I’d sneak into the bathroom and sit on the floor privately sharing my thoughts on sex.  Regard less of where I was, the same thing usually came out of my mouth, before anything else:  shit, I’m tired…And then I’d continue to talk but never really about my sex life because, I’ll be honest here, I don’t have one.  Not really, not yet. Not in the typical penetration, body entwined with body, orgasmic kind of way.  And that’s a taste of what it’s really like.   I am exactly 3 months post-partum now and I can honestly say that sex isn’t the last thing on my mind,  but it certainly isn’t the first, or the tenth, or the twentieth either.   From 1 to 100, it’s got to be about 65 and perhaps that was obvious  in my so-called Sex Diaries. At one point when communicating with the Creative Force in charge of this Current TV project,  she mentioned that she was interested in quality over quantity. 

For a moment there I wanted to scream: QUALITY?  Like how utterly sexy it is to drink 1 cup of nasty tasting oils and a handful of pills and a million drops of tincture every morning, hoping and praying the despair and depression stay away for one more day? Sexy like having so many dirty dishes exploding out of the sink, nothing is left in the drawers and cupboards, leaving the only clean thing to cut apples is a newly sharpened filet knife? And how sexy it was to the get cut by a filet knife, blood dripping on apples, but being in such a hurry that I just licked the blood off and served it to them anyway? And the the sexy 5 small meals and 2 baths (none of which were for me), 3 loads of laundry, a trip to 2 different markets, one stop at a kids creative movement class, 24 ounces of milk production and feeding (in an array of on-the-go positions), exactly ½ hour to check emails, get a smidge of writing done, pay bills and meet with a mortgage broker (with all three kids) before finally getting to  have some down time playing 2-4 year old style dress-up in play silks that smelled like someone had rubbed them with week old cottage cheese? How sexy is that? But for some real quality I better talk about the steamy hot sex I had in 17 different positions in 3 different rooms with 6 full orgasims and after we were done, we continued to have hours of afterplay that turned into foreplay and then we did it again and can you believe that none of the girls woke up to my high volume ecstatic moans or his primal grunts?  Or did she want more of a realistic sense of quality; we fucked for 6.7 minutes and then passed out cold but hey, at least we fucked and maybe even a little milk squirted him in the eye…he likes that.  Or even more along the lines of a full-time mother quality; I finally agreed to blow him after ½ hour of listening to his whining and begging for me to get him off and the whole time all i could think about was if my favorite pair of pants that fit where in the dryer or still in the wash.

And yet none of those sex scenes make up the quality meat in my life.  Except the passed out cold part.  And so that is what my month long of sex diaries was about: the truth.  Personal truth is quality.

Recording almost every day for a month wasn’t easy, especially since most days I have to fight for time to take a piss in private. So what the camera will play back is the real me, my real life.  And I just assume my realness has got to be quite disturbing for those who have a different vision of what living  as a sexual being and a new mother is like; those who think sex lives won’t change and their libido won’t shift and their attraction to the person they used to throb for has turned into a distant pitter.  I don’t know many mothers in my post partum position who are wearing garter belts to bed, holding a big old dildo in one hand and handcuffs in the other (If you are? Can I come over?) and having video quality sex let alone sex on a regular basis at all.  And really, sex isn’t even close to what I want right now, it’s not what my body or soul or spirit asks for.  And I am not suggesting that’s what anybody was dmeanding of me to diary about,  but I highly doubt they ("the creatives" for the vlogging) got what they thought they wanted by inviting me to participate.  My fantasies involve using big-people words again and sleeping eight hours straight and someone inventing a self-cleaning kiddy potty. The small bits of my life that I shared for this project were rooted in the moment, interrupted most of the time, sloppy all of the time, bags under the eyes and knotty hair, wearing the same clothes day after day, cervical cap untouched in original box:  this is what my life is.   

Now it wasn’t always like this, it’s not like I am some unkempt prude.

I won’t go into my sexual history, but for the first 27 months of my relationship with my man we just stayed in bed full-time, and it was the kind of love that was best-seller how-to-book hot.  I had fallen into a pit of hot lava love. Something about his double Scorpio nature, his drummer and sculptor hands, his tattoos, his deep sea diving, his adoration for a girl with a bottom, his ability to flip a record over while inside me,  and his obvious devotion to even the most manic parts of me;  I. Could. Not. Get. Enough.  And apparently neither could he.  We did 3 times a night.  We did it 2 more times in the morning.  We’d call in sick to fuck during El Nino season. We’d tangle in passion on fallen trees and at the beach, in small resorts and under the stars in a yellow tent.   We did it on friend’s floors and parent’s bathrooms.  We used toys and foods and fabrics and wax.  We did not have three small children.  I don’t even think we had a dog yet.

And now that we do have kids?  What could I possibly reveal on camera that could compare to the romping of our early twenties? Or the long tantric evenings just before the kids were conceived? The funniest thing is I never had to speak (on camera) of what life was like after kids.  I’d start to talk about anything sex-in-theme on camera and would be interrupted within 1 minute by a crying baby, a screaming toddler standing in a puddle of pee, or a child frantically trying to pull too small tights over their too big jeans. The camera got turned on and off, cutting my streams of thought in half and then in half again, to attend to a child. Quality thoughts turned into many small and randomd snipets; it became quantity.  The quality needs to be found inside the bits and pieces of my fragmented life. 

But there has been an awakening that happened for me with motherhood.  And it’s good and real, too and I would be doing a diservive to myself and all mothers who allowed themselves to ripen and ruby as they became initiated.

There is a strong and not so subtle sexuality that motherhood seems to harvest.  Underneath the spit-up and yellow grainy poops, the elastic waistbands that now fill the wardrobe, and the collection of “comfy” shoes on the shelf, the glam-less eyelashes looking into the rearview mirror behind the seat of the minivan and in between making almond butter banana boats, there is a cord running from my head down through my root, pulsing with a new kind of Hot.  It’s raw and different, not billboard model or lingerie catalogue or Betty Page pin-up or adult movie star.  It’s more like the suppleness of velvet, the interior flesh of the womb has been molded and lived in and even though it’s empty now, it’s redness, it’ spiral, it’s secret has become me.  I have had something, a taste of the apple, a chance at creation, a reason to moan life forth and the guts to stand there and do it; knowing well enough I am playing the game of Life and Death but caring so much that I decide to take my turn in the endless circle.  My body pulses with a purpose as the home ground, the wet ground, the growing ground, the battleground stripped with wavy scars and cascading curves.  It holds breasts heavy with milk and a yoni with a faint yet lingering scent of bloody and earthy birth.  And while my body expanded with motherhood, slowly, at its own pace comes back to a version of me; my ribs reveal themselves under my thinning flesh, I have cheekbones again, I can sit on the floor and get back up on my own,  I lean into a backbend and fold forward and grab onto my toes. I lie flat on my stomach.  It may not be hot by today’s standards, but it’s primal and it’s intuitive and its a greatly provocative to allow it to be all that it has been; lover, shelter, warrior, mother.   Its not Movie Star Mother On Tabloid Cover, but my type of motherhood turns me on.  It’s dirty, exhausting and it’s real.

When I smear a bit of red gloss across my lips and thread metal earrings through my ears and drop thick amber oil on my wrists, and slide my lime green aviator sunglasses across my eyes, I feel it intensely. Sometimes when I sit down to nurse my baby and milk rushes down and relief comes over me I morph so powerfully wet and nourishing and attractive and needed I am almost over fulfilled.  On good days when we walk through the store with my hair a little brushed and all three kids and myself are in such smooth flow and together we hold and examine fresh ripe produce and decide what to make for dinner and maybe even nibble on a bit of dark chocolate while in the check-out line, it lives in me and comes through me and the hormones are wildy tasty, roaringly loud.  When I open up and enjoy parenting, even in the thick of screaming tantrums and unacceptable kicking, I become pure energy, vibration of mother-knowledge; I hold it as my own sensual prowess. When I collapse in bed at night, a few breaths away from a deep sleep and my cold feet are wrapped around his and my face is buried in his soft back, it’s there heating us both up through to the next day.   When I think about how I pushed my third daughter out with screams and howls and my nails digging into the microfiber of my couch and my head thrown , my back arched, somewhere between Hell and Ecstasy, it’s there. This is my life; and it’s all really sexy to me.  But it’s not SEX.

 It was easy to judge myself: my life has become painfully boring and sexually dry, and it’s unhealthy. we used to make time for sex even for a super-quickie, here and there. 34 years old and in some sort of prime and I haven’t done it in a very, very (very) long time.  Why don’t we create more time for sex? Is it just the exhaustion or does it go deeper and a place we’re too scared to explore?  Why don’t we decide to retreat into the bedroom and get kinky? Instead we fall onto the couch with the laptop in front of us, excited to catch up on Lost episodes? When we do get a sitter, which is so rare, why don’t we go somewhere and have sex in the minivan on some lonely forest road instead of going to the brewery to have beers and talk about our future in our new house, new music we like, writing projects that are pending, the behavior of our four year old, politics, the weather? Oh.  Yeah.  We just had a baby. 

The baby part makes it easy to release the judgments with a few stumbles and tries; we can’t beat ourselves up for having our arms full of life.  I spent many years where sexual exploration was at the forefront of my relationships. Being someones partner now involves so many other passions besides how many times I cum.  It involves raising children.  It involves integrating into a new community.  It involves just trying to stay good friends and harmonious roommates with each other.  And it involves sexy moments; glances when one of us steps out of the shower, slick with water and slathered in oil, or butt smacks when he wears the silly hot pink American Apparel underwear Mia picked out for him on his birthday.  It’s him looking at my cleavage while we sit at dinner and my new big milk boobs are spilling out my too tight shirt from all day nursing or watching him teach Mia and Sula the progression of ska to modern dancehall through record flipping and dancing and singing.  It’s when we chop carrots together to make a soup .  It involves loving my body for the work it’s done, the temple it has been for me and my children; the way it has opened up regardless of how scared I am to be truly seen.  Sometimes it’s the too tight pants I wear and how the seam rubs into my clitoris, or maybe the silkiness of the shirt brushing up against my own nipples, or seeing  a person whose energy makes me turn my head and suck in my breath.  It’s finally buying  a home on ½ acre; fertile land surrounded by rivers and mountains gives him a hard-on and certainly makes me dripping wet. Our climax is sitting late night on the couch with Z in our laps and cooing with her, nuzzling our noses in her double chin and smelling between her stinky toes. Feeling so in love with our children and landing such a lucky life, more charmed as it ages;  not perfect by any means, but it is what it is and accepting that, with humor and tenderness,  it’s what makes our crotches tingle.   Our quality is being with our kids in each moment; experiencing the other and ourselves authentically in any way we can.  It’s erotic and naked and revealing; no penetration required.

 ***

And I am not saying that soon I won’t be one of the many people who are considered sexually active by today’s standard.  These times will pass quickly and the exhaustion will fade and our time will be freed and some hot sticky night, no doubt we will begin humping again.  But for now we aren’t because we are doing other things, making other things, loving in other ways.  That is how it really is.  I’m sure Current TV isn’t super excited for paying me to say that kind of stuff every day for a month, but I gave them the truth.

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