Monday, February 19, 2024

Chicken bath

Chicken Bath





Dear Ian,

This morning I was reading about the Zen of chickens taking a dust bath; how they growl with pleasure quite uncharacteristic of them in daily life. They find some soft, dry dirt and root around until there is a nice hole, where they commence to rolling like fools. For a while, they dig down and rub their entire selves in the dust...head, beak, neck and body....they flop and wiggle to get complete coverage and seem to enjoy themselves mightily. My day starts out nice as I read by the fire I lit this morning. I built it last night knowing how good it would feel to just get up and set it to blaze.

Mariana, Hudson and Kam brought up a load of firewood Saturday for me, and I bask in that memory for  a moment; little feet and boy-arms helping me, and my surrogate daughter sharing a few hours of mayhem and rowdiness all over the house. Acting crazy, then helping me, then acting like raging Indians again....and Mariana on watch to keep them from breaking anything. 

Grace is always sufficient, some say. I think this sentiment is better expressed by my sage son Chris, who noted recently, "She is just figuring it out, like all of us."  He was talking about his sweet sister, Kenzie, but it could be said of Mariana, or Hud, or Kam, or me. I think it does apply to us all. 

I am most definitely still just figuring it out, like everyone else...Sorting through the daily experiences and feelings of being a human being, now in older skin, watching the years tick by and learning to thrive despite the marks left on me. I have buried my parents, several friends and compatriots,  Bailey and Ollie, my marriage......

And I buried you.

I have to pause for a second when I write those two words. 

Breath....... keep writing, Faith.

In spite of these misfortunes, Ian,  despite the ravages of losing you to me here on Earth...I am happy to report to you that I have started to recover. It is as awkward as a chicken rolling in dirt....and by no means finished, but I have even resurrected a desire to have fun. 

I want life again.

I have stirred up some dust and in the process have found gratitude and grace again.


Gratitude, for example, that you stuck so close to me during the early years after transitioning. Nothing ever prepared me-not my studies, not my faith, not my weird curiosity and openness to strange ideas-nothing prepared me for how steadfast and purely miraculous it was to be that you showed yourself, over and over. You found people to use as portals; you found ways to transcend physical law and take care of me. 


No other person in my life has ever loved me in this way. Source had a hand in it, but your fierce love and loyalty was written all over those years, Biggun. I feel oddly smug and proud that I was able to rise up, straighten my back enough to receive the signals..... even through my curtain of pain.





And I am learning to really enjoy my adult Chris and Kenzie. It is a revelation! Yesterday I watched Kenzie as we ate lunch in Menard. 

She had no makeup on and was so beautiful. 

Clearly tired from another all-nighter with Trapper, she never complains. In fact she is the least whiny young Mom I have ever met, and she still seems to really enjoy herself and the boys. I think it is marvelous how she is so determined and yet loving. From her I am learning new ways to be strong.




She connects, allows herself to be emersed, and basks in those boys, even when she is exhausted.

I wish I could gather her up in my arms and make life easier; but that is not my business. My business, I am finally discovering, is to accept her fiercely, love and lift her in prayer privately, and step in when I can, as her sometimes back stage helper. That is all she needs. I see the radiant girl in her more than ever, doing what she has always excelled at......loving her tribe. 

And Chris, oh my Chris. So deep-like a sweet well that no one has reached to the bottom of, and never will. Like a secret garden that I just see in glimpses over a tall fence. Occasionally i get to visit him there, but he does not like Momma-probing; in fact it sends him running away quicker than anything, even when it is just innocent love on my part. When there is a little moment when he lets me in, all the pain of this life dissolves and I see the workings of his good heart and miraculous mind. There is only goodness in him, and I bask in how he is "figuring it all out" himself and I see through his artistic mind and whimsical humor, how he keeps the boy inside him thriving. 


They are different, they are wildly individualistic, adventurous, and unique. Watching them seize life and bask in it is the best gift I have ever been given. I am fed by it.



I am also fed and affirmed in little moments, like when Hudson came back for a fourth goodbye hug and Coy scooted closer to me in his chair,  and with Trapper's slobbery kisses. I feel the truth of it pierce my pain like a happy arrow.








Naturally all along this new way  I feel you, my blue-eyed love ambassador. I felt you this weekend birding and talking to Hudson, and I felt you making a homemade bow and arrow set with him. You were there.

And I want you to know especially, that I feel the gift of perseverance you have taught me these last six years;  aware constantly of the mystery of how you share your energy with me, (from where ever the hell your current incarnation has taken you), and you keep showing up. (I hope someday I get to know how you can do that!)

Until then Ian, 
Carpe Diem. 

Another morning comes 

And I am that chicken taking my own dust bath.

 Someone watching might think it all a weird pursuit from which I take irrational joy. A messy, rowdy, imperfect rolling in the particles of living and learning on this Earth. 

It is not. 

I say to the other chickens, 

                                                                         It is a baptism.



I love you Ian. 


                                                                                                              Mom

Sunday, January 21, 2024

Alchemy

Alchemy


Christmas Eve.

It's very early.

Old Henry woke me up at 4:30 to pee, and I'm glad he did.

It's raining and mild, and the open back door is a speaker, inviting in a lovely sound. 

Also, the smell jolts me. It is cleansing and viseral. 


I have built a fire for company, and meanwhile inside the fireplace on some piece of metal,  rain thumps like a tiny drum. Louder toming is coming from the eaves outside.

Ian's chimes join in. To all the world, it is as if  music is playing as I sit with old Henry and read.

Finished the book The Alchemist, one of many that Bridget and Jamie left me when they moved back to England. It's a preachy little book, but I like the message. It is about our connection, through heart and intuition, with the Soul of the Universe. It is about our life contracts. It is about remembering to listen to the beating of the one grand heart that  is within; the one we all share.

Alchemy is finding out what we all forget.....that we are not alone.

Alchemy is transmuting the basic corporeal nature of something by summoning the truth of the greater nature of EVERYTHING.  Changing the basic elements of anything by tuning into the inner Soul of Universe. If literal alchemy is a myth; a holy grail sought for ions, then spiritual alchemy is transforming the deadness and  pain of current circumstance into blissful peace, by discovering the truth of who we are. Turning lead to gold is not nearly as miraculous as turning anguish into joy by the shear mining of this precious metal.

Following the thread of that is the thing..... 

As best as I can figure, we make lovely plans on the other side, sometimes with the help other souls, and then land here on Earth with a SPLAT, (which must be confusing);  fragmenting and jumbling things up on purpose, so as to have a new go at life......

The trick is to put the puzzle back together in new ways. Maybe to find again, our "True, original course" (thanks you WH Auden). 

We beat our heads against the obstacles of humanness....sometimes we don't get through this exercise.....but then sometimes we do.

Here is the fun part.

All this is about  an invitation to expand Love (with a big L, not a little one), because Love is it....the Alpha and the Omega. Life, the Universe and Everything. The jet fuel and the airplane, and all the passengers.....

Love is the whole enchilada. By giving into it; by finding it.....we keep creating it. 

It is Alchemy, because we must cook it up over and over again, with the ingredients  that life offers.....sweet,  savory.......or bitter as gall. If God is a great big gorilla, we souls are the beating heart of her.

I might have engaged in some alchemy myself this Christmas. Since nothing has been as I would wish these last six years, and since my efforts to turn my life around through my own muscle have largely been an abysmal failure, I seem to have resorted to holding my breath, jumping overboard and abandoning ship. 

 I follow the most basic instinct I have. Love.

Let's just say this...only love can come in and wipe clean the chalkboard of my worried mind.

Remind me to forget expectation.

Be humble.

Let it  all go.

Surrender, for I am out of bullets.

Love the rain, and the fire, and old Henry instead.

Love my  three precious children as they are.....out there living their best lives.

Bask in that thought. Release them from the prison of my expectations and see the beauty of their independence and choice. Just love them. 

Get quiet, peaceful and still, open up and find the thread again. As I do this, I notice that the strain of it all eases up for a bit, desperation sighs, yawns and goes to sleep. From within, some other kind of love just comes back. It is a bigger, broader feeling....a different animal, one so expansive it must come from somewhere else entirely. 

I have come to think of it as a spring or a well, where the water is sweeter, more pure. Infinite. In my solitude I plumb the depths of it. Perhaps turn things upside down for a fresh look.


Maybe  untethering myself from the prison of desire,  the wild bird of abundance can take flight? 

She is a beauty, she is..... Perhaps my love is her liberation?

Maybe then at her whimsy, she will alight on my worthy heart and build a nest there.

And even lay a few tiny eggs. 

Meanwhile the rain agrees.....

And  takes it's leave.....

As comes the alchemy of dawn 


Monday, December 4, 2023

The Soup



The Soup

Dear Ian,

    

I am writing to say things change.  

Things change. 

Its December, as you well know...... the witching month; the one I dread the most. I approach it with a mix of longing and loathing.  I have felt the weight of it laying on my heart again. The holidays are like food that I crave that has been laced with poison, and I damned well know it. And I kind of want to eat it anyway because used to be my favorite thing......my favorite time, you see? My house full of the people I loved the most..... Excitement at full throttle with the three of you and all of us infected with the spirit of Advent. 

Full throttle Christmases.......over the top.......caprice and excess all draped in too many lights....it was my heart's delight.

Anyway, things change. 

I am doing a little better every year since you transitioned. I finally tore the old puzzle apart, scrambled the pieces, cut off some edges and glued it back together in a strange new way. I trimmed off the parts that didn't fit and pushed them back together with equal measures of desperation and hope. 

I have come to accept now that even if I am on the periphery of my own kids' lives, we still love each other and we are figuring out where we all fit. I have new people who have come along and seem to really understand me. The surprise of that has been huge.

I have even felt the glimmers of Christmas Spirit; with my neighbors, with Kent at the movie ELF wearing our green hats; with Nita at the Christmas fair....seeing dogs in costumes and such. It doesn't hurt so much when I see happy children because I have puzzle-pieced Hudson and Coy and TW over the holes that you left. Your brother and sister are amazing, grown humans and I love how they have turned out. 

Things change.

New customs have fallen into my life like soft, quiet snow over the landscape. Mariana and Kam mess up my house the way you kids once did; I find leggos under my couch and it is lovely. Neighbors eat my cookies and I am making new stockings because Kenzie is coming home for a day! Chris and I hang Christmas lights. It is a bit solumn but always so magical....and that custom is absolutely for you, Ian. He does that in rememberance and of this I am grateful.

I had a bad night Saturday because I found out about a girl named Madison who used to date or sleep with you. She even came to your funeral and gave Michaela a hard time, because I think she still loved you. It twisted me up pretty bad all night and sent me into a spin of "what ifs" and memories of our terrible last days. 

I was drawn down again into the place I cannot go.

Churning and awake most of that night and then wilted the next day.

But in the morning I did something different. I stayed home and mended; just let my wound be; I asked my tribe of souls, including you,  to just help me. (I think I begged at one point).....

And then I took a nap.

Naps help when things are changing.

After all of that, last night Bridget and Jacie came over for a last glass of wine before she leaves for England. I usually host them; they eat a little food and drink whatever wine is in the fridge. My open wound was still there, I was aware of it, but somehow if felt different. I could feel it like the mouth of a cave, with cold are coming out.

There was an almost imperceptable shift in me. Instead of stacking the pain of Bridget leaving on top of my December horror-show-gloom.....I suddenly could not feel bad. In fact, this sense of warnth began to come and the chill of my pain could not find purchase. I could not feel it.

All I could feel was LOVE.

It was everywhere, all through my house. It seemed to even change the color of the room. It was as if it had been poured in through the chimney or the heater vents....It effused everything. 

Perfect, palpable, sweet-as-water-from-a-spring. 

Suddenly I could see the gift of these girls. It was as miraculous as how the three of us had met to begin with 5 years ago. Bridget gathering me up and getting me walking,,,,,

literally (and without her knowledge) binding my wounds and setting my broken bones as we walked endless miles through the ranch. Sarcasm and dogs and exercise.


Jacie loving and loving and loving me as we watched endless hours of Game of Thrones and snarked at life like two angry crows. 

Fists to the sky and chests heaving at the unfairness of our precious ones being taken too soon. Letting me love her in her darkest days after her Mom left. 

Somehow in the churn of all of this, they became my daughters.

Last night when we were saying goodbye,  it no longer mattered that Bridget is leaving or that Jacie is still stuck in a shitty place or that I am old. It did not matter that we come from different continents and vastly different times.  Everything else is just the stories we live. 

Things change. 

Stories change. 

Mine has and so shall theirs. 

I went to bed content and at peace. My tribe of souls were a witness to the love of these great women. They were around us all night and they stayed with me as I slept. swimming and rejoicing with me in the soup of life. Happy for me, I think, and excited that I found a different door out of the morass of grief again, even if just for a moment, and happy that I could let things change.

And things do change

Except love, it is the constant.


                                                                            Love, 

                                                                                        Mom








Monday, September 18, 2023

The Buffet

The Buffet


When Trapper got sick this week it sprung a coil in me. I reached out to everyone I knew for prayers 

And they all prayed - even Marcus.

Its a  strange thing, prayer.....I don't know precisely how it works. 

So much of what I believe have changed; I think I am done with church for this life.....

My days of sitting in a pew are over.

And yet I pray.

Every time I walk, I look to the heavens, or to the clouds, or the canopy of trees with light shining through. I look to the heavens and the blooming of the dawn and a calmness overcomes me.

 I feel a thunderbolt of "Otherness" arrive. I feel a great, expansive Source. I let it fill me and reset me, and point me in the right direction for another day. I breath it in and I am renewed, grateful, filled.


Surely this too is prayer

And the reliance on this power may be a sort of organic faith.

Yet, sometimes my old ways awaken in me again.

When Trapper got sick,  I pulled out all the stops and brought in the big guns....I went back to deliberate, old fashioned Biblical prayer. I asked Source directly to intervene on his tiny behalf. Instead of relying just on the buffet of delicious nature to help me, I began to order directly from the menu:

" God....Source...Ian, Momma, Glen....all of you who keep an eye on me and mine, please help Trapper." I talked directly to the cells in his little body, to his immune system, to the very neurons and white blood cells fighting for his health. I prayed for the hands of the doctors and the people helping him, especially his Momma...."Don't let them miss anything!"

I called forth all the mighty forces and it felt good.

It is like being bilingual;

Like people I have heard of who speak mainly English, but dream in their native tongue.

Except for me it is the reverse. 

Mostly now my native language, the natural world, prevails. I feel a member of a vast community of souls, 

And we are all Source belying the notion of a Father God, above and away from us.

Pieces of us are here on Earth walking around in meat suits while other pieces vibrate at a different frequency around, yet are still so near....around, between and beyond. We are many and we are One, woven of the same fabric and there for one another.

A family, a whole bucket of energy all together, moving in a dynamic sway and expanding through the fuel of love.

It may sound  like a wacky way to describe this circus of a thing we call life, but it works for me and it gives me great peace.

Yet still......

Yet anyway...... in this urgent moment I reverted back to my old religion; my old way of asking for help and turned it into a direct plea, once again like a child to her father, rather than to my Source of souls. 

And by goodness, that is ok, too.

Here's a funny thing.

In my loving and worrying about Trapper, I wanted my old memorized prayers that I relied on for most of my life. Not just the Lord's prayer or the 23rd Psalm, but two specific long prayers that I used to repeat over and over when I was desperate with worry for Ian. I needed those words again, but I could not remember the words.

It was frightening. I felt frozen and lost, like losing an important phone number.

I asked for them back.

Suddenly, the two prayers popped into my mind like an old song. I knew them instantly and entirely, without a word missing. The entire verses found my tongue and poured forth again and it was lovely and delicious.



Then is when I knew.

Then is when it became clear.

All these ways of knowing, of thinking and of grasping at the unknowable God, elusive and quiet and often so still....they are all true and ok.

Source is God.

Source is the Jewish God.

Source is Allah and the Great Spirit, and Abba and Jahweh.

Source is undefinable and will never be completely known or perfectly defined by any religion or sect.

Source is a particle and a wave, as a physicist might muse.

That is the point.

To be elusive is to be sought;

And Source desires that we seek.

As long as a small creature, such as myself, is willing to wonder and read and ask and search for Source, she will find Them.

It's ok, no matter how or where I go to get my fill, to dreink the magic in-for me it is lately the dawn sky-but it might be a pew or a Bible.

As long as I do it with love, I will be heard. 

Sometimes I will raise my arms to the sky and pull from the buffet, and dance in a community of souls. Sometimes, I will plug my cord  directly into the socket and I will be charged and solace will be found that way. It's all good.

Seek and ye shall find,

Ask and it will be given.

As the God of my parents would say.



And this little love note I raise up to Source......

Thank you for helping Trapper and his Momma......

Whoever, and whatever, and where ever the heck You are.........

I do love You.


Friday, August 18, 2023

Messiness



Messiness

The woods down the road from my house are a mess. I walk along in the August morning, before heat begins its torment, and I look up into the canopy of oak and elm; into the dense body of cedar and such,

 and I see no order.





The upper branches twisted and knitted together, like clasping fingers of really old hands. Many are broken off from last February's deadly freeze, when the weight of ice was so great that branches, and sometimes whole trees, gave way and snapped off. I could hear the sound from inside my house, like artillery fire. 


Whole sides of grandfather cedars calved off and lay down in a royal bow along the road, where they still lay dead. Now in summer's heat the trees are a mangle of their history, as if each one is trying to eek out it's own spot, tight with the others, like clasped hands.







They stand together in a tangled hug.



Underneath is an assortment of rocks and rubble, some honeycomed and ancient-looking; some recently broken from the heat, or the weight of a passing cow's hoof. Leaves, stiff and crumbly are taking their time turning to soil. Switch grass and blue stem lean over dry and tired. 


I remember them green and vertical in the Spring....


And before that....In February I would walk here, bundled up and breathing frost.  I squatted down to take pictures of this same grass blanketed in ice.




It's no wonder nature is a mess.




As I walked today, I thought about what the order should be...Oaks uniformly reaching to the sky;  Cedar round, manicured,  and as well defined as a topiary. Nature like nice movie, the Disney kind. But nope, not so.....A movie of this place would be more of a  Tarantino, full of shocks and irony.



Regular order makes no sense in my Texas...what with crazy unexpected cold spells, rain freezing on anything it can grab....rain that in the summer refuses to come and then comes with wild winds....torrential  and damning....


Plants that, if they could, would shiver at their lot.



And then with a heave, summer comes.




Heat.




Heat that brings life to a standstill, like a great moaning inhale, and drives every godforsaken living thing to the shadows, and under rocks. Heat that cooks the very surface of everything and puts life into slow motion for weeks as the color drains from grass and tree, We all wait for water, reserve our resources and hope for the cool of night, or just a cloud.



Some ways of life beg for disorder; for things to stand together in a riot of meagerness;  lean into each other......trees and briars and tiny plants too numerous to name; so dry that they are brittle as glass; so thirsty that only their roots hold moisture.


Disordered...still...waiting....

Yet I think it is really not an absence of order; its more like the math of things is bigger than we can easily see. You must step back and take the birdseye view, look down and see.....

Roots run deep in a labrynth of life beneath the still, dusty ground.

Entangled branches give shade and support.

Even fox scat shares moisture with insects and smaller creatures who feed on it.

Limbs broken off by last Winter's violent frost exposes pulp that seems to suit lichen very well.

Today, I saw a scrub jay  tilting and gliding effortlessly between the dry broken branches. It was energetic and radient. Somehow this fellow is finding food and moisture and seems to be making a good living. Another mystery.

Disorderly order prevails....






Spiders will always keep a clean house. 





Leaf cups will always grab the dew. 




Life will live in whatever manner it can.


Most trees will live to see another Fall; another rain; another Winter. The dead ones will slowly collapse in the arms of their neighbors over dozens of years, and beetles will relish and make a meal of them. 




















Fox will adjust her pallet and fill up on grasshoppers instead of mice, who have learned to hide in the cool of cracks and crevasse


Grasshoppers will get fat because doing the job of cleaning up dry stems,  full of protein. Blue stem won't mind because six inches in the dirt, their roots are keeping the lights on for the next wet season. 


This is improvisational jazz, not a simple melody. 

I try to understand and listen with my heart and look with my third eye. I remember that whatever rhythm moves the clock of nature in my Texas, it is probably more vast than we can imagine.

So I just listen, and I look.....and I am a witness...until time brings around a greener season....

To this bountiful and beautiful mess.





















   




 


 

Tu me manquez


You Are Missing From Me

 I don't know what to do with this feeling "tu me manquez" except to embrace it and write it down. Like a person going through a psychotic break with a scribe walking along taking notes on a clipboard, I am both. 




There are two worlds for me now; the world of regularity, of humanity and all my measurable time. People I have known, objects, symbols, sounds and familiar stories. It is the place of all my time and memories of you. I wake up and go to sleep and go about the business of the usual in this world but increasingly, I am living in a lucid dream from which I want to wake up. Everyone I know and everyone I love is here, except for you, Ian, and it feels all wrong. It feels foreign. 


Your world  is one of otherness...maybe it is an ether..... it is where I think you might be now. What I know of it is that it is a place of feelings and clues, of upside down reality with no before and after, only a bigness that can only be known by feel, not by fact. Every day at some point, I try to push my hand through and into it, searching for you. The more I think about the nature of this realm, the more I seek to know it, the closer and larger it comes. 


Living among most people feels uncomfortable now; I stand apart. Except for the few sweet people that lean in and hold onto me, I have let most everyone go, at least in my mind. Thankfully, they don't know or feel the absence of my spirit, and I don't need for them to read this vacancy. I am no longer engaged because these regular humans in this regular world have committed the crime of getting to continue to live and love while you and I cannot. At least not here.

But as my heart has shifted away from these people and this life, in nature have come the surprises. Last winter when you left, the coldness was a small comfort. It seemed apt. When Spring did come I hated it. How could Spring come with you not here? How could it dare do that....I wanted the final winter of your life to last forever. Then came this spring
     

Monday, August 7, 2023



Letting the Little Ones Go

                 Dear Ian, 

  I've been painting the rails
 On the front porch.

Along the way,
 pulling out the old staples you and Chris punched in 
To hold a thousand Christmas lights 
For the last 20 years.

It stung to pull them out
Knowing you guys put them there

In the service
Of "Christmas-ing our home.




I remember
So well
You and Chris's feet thumping on the roof like reindeer 
I remember your generous spirits.

How beautiful the light were
And still are 
As Chris carries on the tradition.


















The two of you put in those staples
But with a determined will
 I pulled them out anyway, 

Trying to
Renew things,
Even just a porch. 



 It was a will in me to let change happen
 Maybe a promise to myself

 To move past the time
When seeing a bent staple 
Can still conjur pain. 


To breath;
To let some other time come.




While painting,
 I  also encountered dozens of tiny spiders  
Living in the armpits of the boards. 
There was safety there, 
And plenty of insects for them, 
Until I came along with my brush. 
Some were bigger- the size of pellets or peas-intricately colored and shaped. 
They reminded me of small robots, 
Fierce and menacing to an ant, 
I would expect, 
But embarrassingly cute to me. 




The more intriguing ones
 were as tiny as specks of dirt; their life only made obvious
 By a slight wiggle or flutter of movement. 
The smallest spiders I have ever seen. 
I also found their egg sacks; white dots deposited 
On the end of stiff and vertical chitin stalks, 
As if someone had stood up tiny Qtips in symmetrical lines.




As best I could,
 I moved them, 
Painted around them 
Or shooed them away before pulling down their houses. 
They will rebuild, I'd wager. 






I probably painted over a few, for which I am sorry.

I thank them all, 
My intrusion surely made things a little harder for them,
But we all must accomodate.

So, I am writing to say
I pulled out all the staples
But I tried to let the little ones 
Go on making a living.

My way of saying
I stand for life
And I am still trying to let you go live yours.

                                                  Love, 
                                                                     Mom