The Ball

 The Ball

Across the river and upstream from my place are a series of dams and makeshift rock pools; homemade walls devised by someone to hold some of the precious water that comes from time to time. These days, my little river is dry more than full. Even long ago, I imagine ranchers  just wanted  to stay the effects of our Texas summer heat a little longer. 

In our own early years here, the kids and I were always thrilled by big rains; by the occasional floods that filled the swimming holes and brought back the sounds of rapids and spillways. No matter how long the river lasted, it was a blessing, and our bank would be once again littered with tubes and floats and muddy shoes. Once dry again, as it mostly is these days, the riverbed becomes a lovely place to walk with my dogs.

Upstream, the dam and crude rock wall holds water much longer, and it has become my custom to go there on our walks. I cross the dry bed south, climb the bamboo-lined berm into the vast pasture across the way. I then turn west, walking upstream, around a bend  and back down to the river. I go by way of a badly cut gash in the caliche bank, probably made by some fool to try to divert a natural draw.

It does not work.... it is out of place here, and looks like someone used a dirty pink eraser to smudge the landscape, disrupting the natural runoff into a muddy mess. Best laid plans. Walking down, I smile to see one of my favorite spots on earth.

The main dam is well-made and concrete; with a thoughtful spillway that is low, anchored securely into the bedrock. That's why it has never washed away because debris flows over it easily. Low, streamlined and non-descript. Just below that is a sturdy rock wall that cups the captured water into a pool, and because it was so smartly placed, water stays here much longer than anywhere else along the river. It is a sweet spot for Phoebe and Henry to take a dip and get a drink along our walk.

In early October of this year, some unexpected rains came; a 5 inch torrent  that flooded the area and filled our river briefly. 

A couple of weeks later I was walking to the dam to survey it's state, thinking of the nature of my life, and found, with a real shock, that a blue soccer ball had gotten herself stuck in the current at the foot of the spillway. Spinning furiously, she was kept in the grip of that one spot....

Pushed down by the spillway flow

Pushed up by the undertow

And pushed in on both sides by the curving flow of water. 

A perfect vortex.

We watched, my dogs and I.........transfixed and perplexed by the symmetry and illogical perfection of the moment. Like as not, that ball had been there at least 2 weeks, since the flooding had subsided. 

She bobbed this way and that way a bit, teasing an escape, but never did. This was a real and true case of nature having it's say about things.

She was not going anywhere. 

I don't know how long we stood there watching, but I do remember the sound of sycamore leaves applauding and the coming and going of cloud shadows.  I remember the tug of thinking that I had seen something important, I might never see again. I felt sad and amused and exhilarated.

A couple of weeks later we returned and  son of a bitch if she wasn't still there, spinning haplessly in the same spot!

So remarkable and weird to think how long this ball had been kept "just so" by forces and energies that ping in my mind somewhere between randomness and serendipity....Science slapped firmly in the face by chaos. 

 Ah, my friend Chaos Theory..... 

I've always been fascinated by it. Cybernetics and String Theory...Quantum and such all rely on some degree of chaos an  organizing principle. I lean toward it as one of the best tools of a blithe and curious Creator. Not "instead of"  but rather skillfully and playfully used by my Source.

    The math beneath the magic.

    One of Source's many delightful tools of expansion. Less a God of puppets and strings and laser-beam "zapping" things into being; More a soft, sarcastic nudge..... swirling a stick in the primordial mud of everyone's lives just to see what might pop up.

    

     And as Matthew Arnold said in "The Buried Life":

        But often, in the world's most crowded streets;

        But often, in the din of strife,

        There arises an unspeakable desire

        After the knowledge of our buried life,

        A thirst to spend our fire and restless force,

        In tracking out our true and original course;

        A longing to inquire into the mystery of this heart which beats

        So wild, so deep in us....to know whence our lives come

        And where they go."

 It is a full month later now,  and she still spins at the base of the spillway-her blue geometric designs slowly being scraped raw;  the beige leather of her exposed. I go to visit her now a few times a week to see if she has yet broken free of what holds her..... 

And to to receive the refreshing and shocking reminder...........

We are all in the grip of something.

And one day soon, I'll put on my hiking shoes and walk down to my river;  I'll climb the bank where young bamboo is optimistically beginning to fill in;  Across the pasture thigh-deep in thistles and switch grass;  Turn north and wind back down to the dam;  Look over the edge of the berm......

 And she will be gone.

 I will be sad.

 But this too will be right and proper......

    

Things get stuck

Things get unstuck

There is a beginning,

There is a necessary end;

Life changes again.

I am the Ball.

Conjuring

Conjuring

I'm almost free of September.

Almost free from the web of remembrance. The grip of its bonds.

 

Twas indeed better than last year because of this strange way you and I are evolving in life together. Physical and non-physical practicing a new dance. I am allowing myself a new frame of understanding and it has given you back to me. Sort of......

You are still you

Still Ian

still that familiar son, boy, teen, man.

I recognize the essence of you immediately and without a single doubt.

This bold pronouncement is as delicate as the most delicate;

As delicate as a dandelion tuft;

As delicate as a wisp of  the smallest part of a shimmer of sun on wings.

I conjure you up as I walk or pet Phoebe, as I sit on our couch.

I conjure your arm around me or hand in my hand hiking.

Our chins tip north when I look at clouds

And south to examine a bug, 

Both our knees bending us low.

Always you are just behind me

Or beside me.

My memory brings forth your voice and gait, and often the tenor and timber of  your humor and attitude.  It is the low, mature sound of a fully grown man.

I absolutely feel you.

All the way through

and around and within.

I am told that when I think of you, it is because you are already thinking of me.

I love that thought.

Our minds with no barriers.

I don't share you with a girl

Or a job

Or with drugs.

You ask, I am here

I ask, you are here.

Yet this wisp of a dream of knowing....this possibility....is new and challenging to hold.

Some days as easy as a dive into warm water;

Some days I balance on one foot with muscles burning

Just to hold you for one more second.

Then I topple and I am back in this world.

It is I that release you first, strange to say, I go back to this other life.

Memories do not serve. 

They burn and scorch and leave me in ruin.

A while back you and Elijah and I were talking about my need to let you go.

"You have to let me go, Mom, so we can be together in this new way. Those days are over, and they're never coming back. That incarnation of me is finished." As you said this, you showed Elijah an image of you in silhouette, walking away, dissipating into particles and becoming a part of all.

I understood. 

My love allowed me to feel the truth and peace of it.

I felt the joy of you going on a great trip or off to college and on a deeper level I guess I knew that it ok.

This is the fascinating aspect of conjuring. 

We accumulate experiences

Imagine things into form

Incorporate and assimilate and move forward as it is the only way.

Holding onto the pictures and mementos

Turns out to be for naught.

Gone, gone, gone beyond....

Gone forever and beyond.

So step on forward.

Daily now, I point my compass north, bat away memories and cast my net toward the downstream flow of this. I conjure the doorway back to you today, and accept again that there is a Source of all things...

sometimes I feel It's presence above my head. I feel sparkles.

You and I are in and of this Source,

Though I only get to have you through a different type of sight.

And so, My dearest, My Ian,

My son, my friend, my partner in this strange trek.....

Thank you for leading me 

Where I never knew I could go.

                                        Love, 

                                                   Momma

The Contract

The Contract

     I woke up thinking of you, Mom, which is something I don't do very often anymore. Not that don't love you or that the winds of time have erased your mark and measure on me....they have not. 

     Who you are..... 

     Who you were.....are woven into my fabric; into the woof and wharf of me.

     I'm 63 and you would be 102 now. 

     When you were 63, I was 23...I think that was approximately the year you finally got sober.  I am not certain, but I think you were moving to Kerrville to run the Essay House. I was moving to Houston, launching into a new life myself.

     Ten years later at 73, when you moved on to the non-physical, you had pulled yourself together and made a fresh start...with a new home.....all by yourself. Of course I was busy living, too. Busy with a career and kids and all the good stuff.

     I was alight......

     Full......

     Zipping around my world like a firefly while you did all that.

     Odd to think you seemed so serene.

     Was that hard for you? Were you lonely or feeling abandoned? It didn't seem like it at all. Of course I don't remember too much about the final years, ignited as I was by my own purpose and then the birth of my own babies. I do remember loving you so much, and being thrilled by what you had accomplished;

     So glad to have my Mom back; so glad you were sober, that the eyes I looked into were clear and had some sparkle. So glad to see Scientific American in your bathroom and humming bird feeders hanging up again. To have your homemade candy and to talk about art.

     I never told you this, but the people in my life knew I was proud of you; everyone that met you fell under your charm, even Harry Goolishian, as well as Kent and all my friends. You even won the love of Danny, oddly enough.

      I also never told you that I saw that you never lost your loving, open, inquisitive heart...even in the dark years....the essence of you still survived inside all that mess. And in your sober years, when I was no where to be found, and when your other kids had formed their own allegiances (as we all must do) you found others to love and help. I can remember them now, standing at the back of the funeral home, mourning your passing, too.  

     I never told you that I know you were also jealous, hurt and suffered from the ravages of all you lost to alcohol....how it robbed you of getting to be the mother and grandmother you wanted to be. I know you craved this, as I do now. You knew the pain of regret. And yet you bloomed some in those last few years...... the post-alcohol years......

     To me..... the clearest proof that you accomplished what you set out to do in your time here on Earth.

       Your Contract.... as I speculate it to be. 

       If you and I preplanned any of what happened here...

       As I draw my breath.......My heart says yes.

       Tis the sweetest mystery of the soul's work.....That we  create grand missions

       Before Earth.....

       Before physical form......

      But I was late coming on the scene to you, Mom. I was the runt. I can only imagine how tired and weary you were as I came yowling into the family. You had to be dry as a leaf and spent....and yet, despite all that, and the alcohol...

     I always felt wanted.

     I always felt loved.

     I always knew that our souls recognized each other. 

     The good moments were so good, Mom.

      Perhaps that is why within my life of so many regrets and moments of wistful clinging, I feel no regrets about you.

     I do not pine or cling to you....ever. I have such a delicious peace about us as we were and as we are... evidence of the full turn of the dial; evidence that we fulfilled our contract to one another. I know this.

     Now as I imagine what you were "about" here on Earth, I can see the pattern in your fabric....... a solitary soul, more inclined to turn inward and seek, than to cleave to others. As a Mom you always seemed to be pushing me to see the beauty of the little things just before me....

     To press my nose against the glass....

     To see beyond the veil.....

     To go deep....

     To ask the odd question.....Never in words, but by modeling.....you nudged me to the edge of ideas to become a rebel, skeptic, free-thinker, wonderer......

     You were often terribly bad at being a regular Mom, but perhaps that was the point of

     The Contract?

     Pulling against the reins of married life and convention; not fitting in.

     Maybe that was in your Contract, too... Maybe you said:

     "I'm going down there and not fitting in. I'm going to feel out of place, unloved, lonely.   I'm going to feel the deepest love of my life for my children, but will also feel jealous and unworthy and I will run away into the bottle. I am going to almost die from disappointment and the feeling of being lost. I won't ever really fit in, and then I will come to find my true self at full stop in an alley in San Antonio, drunk and alone. As I always planned. Every piece of my structure torn down, but the essence of my soul still intact. Then I will come back, brick by brick....not to perfection, but to myself. Authentic. In a world of humans who never take the deep dive, I will...and I will swim to the surface anew."

     Momma, 

Our contract was sound,

 Sharp edges and all and

     I am the better for it. 

     It was preparation for my current season.

     I thank you for showing me how to go deep.....

     Then swim to the surface and breath.....

     And to know in my heart the softer song

     Of the gypsy way.

    

the Mission

The Mission

 I did it, Ian.

Carried 2 bags of your favorite things on a hike to the Arctic.

Decorated a white fir tree in your honor, hiking to a perfect spot on the side of a sunny berm, facing north. Draped her branches with bits of beads, strips of fabric from your work t shirt, 

Feathers, 

Coins, 

Pictures,

Even your truck keys, 

UIL ribbons and baseball medals. 

Precious things.

Irreplaceable things.

But things nonetheless.

I put my shoulders back and decided that, if I was going to have a "letting go" ceremony, it should be as outrageously over top as possible.

Just like you.....

That's right....Go to the top of the world, jump on an obscure mining road, and walk a couple of miles into the middle of everything.....

and then dare to look even further north....north of north of north.....find a small but perfectly situated white Fir tree......

                                                                          

nondescript, 

solitary, 

  and so young.....

More life ahead than behind, just beginning to start her ascent into the sky, I then decorated her with you.

A Canada Jay came down ad pronounced himself  suddenly and very loudly, and I knew you were there.......

And I knew you were pleased by the display.

 I breathed all that in,

Said goodbye

 And walked back south.

Back at our home.

Its been some weeks now, and I see what Marie meant. She said letting you go would allow you back in,

But first was a cleansing.

I felt like I had the flu, achy, tired and sick;

Then gradually felt a loosening; a quickening, a slow exhale. Changes happened slowly, like gradually focusing my eyes to a new spectrum. I began to sense you more around me; to think less of our other life. Like particles evaporating, the you that I knew before began to disappear, as the you that is now swelled around me.

Stuckness has gives way to a quiet and unmistakable sense of movement, oddly, more external than inside. I have abandoned trudging along the rocky shore and have stepped back into the river, lifted my feet ......let myself float. Look ahead.

And I am once again being carried downstream.

It feels like the right direction.

They say everything good is downstream, Ian.

I don't know about that but.....

I smile at the thought of that tree growing for 100 years to fruition and carrying bits of you with her, and this gives me a satisfaction I cannot even describe.

 It is just right.

                                                                 Love, 

                                                                                   Mom

The Learning Time

The 
Learning Time

In the other time

In the happy time;

Time of sticky fingers,

pillows that smelled of sweaty cheeks and kisses.

The buzz of life being lived

And my skin full of touches and hugs of small people.

In the other time

When I was more happy, life was less vivid than now.

Bleared and muted by life being lived.

Not crisp and intense like now;

Not shrill or intense or sharp-edged like now....    

Less intricate.

My heart all full with filling and no yearning

To draw my gaze.

Maybe that is the point

The real point of now...

Of all this sudden intense looking;

All of this seeing.

Maybe this is the moment of reckoning; of another birth.

As I walk through this field and my eyes are drawn to smaller and more intricate things.

Hungry to see whatever I can see, to distract me from  

Clinging   to the other time 

And find what still is good on this Earth.

Every tiny bug, every winged and crawling bit of life 

Finds my eye

Captures me 

Seems important to note.

Step off the path 

Into the weeds

Avoid the flowers and webs

Be a gentle visitor. 

Kneel down

Kneel down really close and feel the other life drift away

Away and gone. Another story  and another time.

Where I used to see just a thistle 

Purple and straight

As I passed by on my way to chase a little boy down....

Now I see the purple thistle with a green crab spider 

Waiting to snare God knows what.....

And two beetles boring into the pollen up to their asses 

And one of my golden bees;

Big and beautiful spinning in a circle,

And the acrid smell of  the bloom rotting, dropping the fading lavender fronds to the grass below.

What is all this new precision in seeing for?

Look deeper

Look deeper 

Look deeper

What am I looking for?

Desire for beauty is the velvet cord

Pulling me back slowly

Pulling me back slowly

To the desire for life.

And then to life.

Mourning, that threatens to squeeze my heart to a full stop,

Squeeze my heart to silence.....

Is rattled by moments of absurd and seemingly pointless curiosity

It is an electrical shock, 

It is life support.

This is the Learning Time

The time I will remember more keenly

When my eyes and heart will align and become a laser

A microscope, a telescope, a portal.

 I am snagged by optimism

That after all it might be worth it

To stay and see who else

Might be be found in the purple thistle.

Tree Grace

 Tree Grace

Dear Ian,

The  last  logs are burning down this morning in my fireplace. It has been a  brutally cold week. I've watched the snow come and go twice; seen patterns of ice and frost form, melt, reform, and disappear. Sometimes a crack appears on the surface of a melting puddle, displaying half-rotted leaves and organic matter, framed like a perfect art piece.. As it refreezes, delicate new designs form in the fissures and cracks.

It is as if someone has drug a cold finger

Slowly along the surface                                             

Sketching lines for the frost to follow.

Snow humps up in my dry river bed on top of the ice, for some reason ; it seems to undulate like creatures alive and moving under a blanket. Round areas of mud and pebbles are magnified, and everywhere the colors have changes from the taupe and dead grey of winter to cool shades of azure, lavender, and a most pale French blue, shocking against the cobalt tones of mud and exposed damp wood. 

Everything seems to inhale and hold an icy breath.

Even the clouds have surrendered all warm tone.

 

And as if tired

Of all this cold

Sky breaks open briefly;

And the sun butters everything...

The ground

The trees,

Frozen puddles,

Dripping eaves.

The world is slowly beginning to thaw. 

Earth beneath is oozing and seems oddly warm, alive, moisturized. 

I've gone through 3 years of firewood in a week; two whole cut-up trees and some additional kindling accumulated from tidying up my lawn. 

The first tree fell two years ago in the woods headed down to the river. Chris and Payden came and cut it up for me. I remember how good it was to to have them here. 

I remember wishing you were out there helping too, hanging out with your big brother; voices and laughter rising like steam from the woods. That particular tree heard your laughter for 23 years....she was probably 80 years old. Maybe your sounds are logged in her bark and branches?

 As I think of her, and you and Chris and the proximity we all shared, I marvel that she is now a very fine log being lapped by flames; keeping my living room warm this morning.

The second tree threatened to fall this last year, dropping slabs of bark and branches suddenly...... even whole limbs along the path down to our river. I don't know what killed her; maybe age....too much water (or not enough), but she pushed her remaining energy back into the ground and died very quickly.

My friend Bill (who once held your small boy hand as you gave him a tour through the yard), proudly rendered her into fine triangular pieces in exchange for a haircut. He was really proud to help me. He loved you. I can see the two of you walking under her so long ago and wonder if she knew you'd be gone before her.

I miss that tree. She was one of my favorites, standing just to the right of my path down to the river...roots "contra posto";  one long knee draped over another cross legged, making her appear to stagger. She hugged a huge rock for dear life as kids looked beneath her for Easter eggs, and as kayaks were dragged across her bottom parts.

Dying more suddenly, her logs were fresh and moist and green. 

In my fireplace, she burns slowly, making pops and hisses....

Both give unexpected warmth in their final act of giving.

I stopped writing just now to go outside and feed the birds, and noticed how the light reaches in the holes my two trees left behind in the sky. I think for a moment of the first words you gave me through Paula three years ago....

"Everything was set in motion before time."

There are gifts in the passing of precious things.

Trees die, 

Ice storms wreck havoc 

Young men and neighbors come to help...even my English friend Jamie fixed my well so I can take a shower again. 

Gifts are somehow strategically put into place, specifically, perhaps.....for me.

Hidden like Easter eggs

More manna than chocolate candy.

God keeping the engines tuned,

Giving back when life gets taken away.

Most days I miss them, these small graces. Most days I am too buried in the minutia of life or in the weight of grief, to notice their presence. They do not populate my mind as much as they should. Perhaps the coldness and relentlessly dismal weather is whispering for me pause to clasp hands together and bow in gratitude to two trees, some friends, my living son, and my son beyond living.

And as the snow melts, and my fire burns down, and my water comes back on, and I take a shower to go meet a friend, I think of the odd synchrony of all this.

Beauty finds me and I am grateful.

I don't feel so alone.

Even though most of the people I once loved have drifted away, my real tribe is still blanketing me.....A colorful and funny-shaped crochet throw 

A tapestry 

The serendipity of

Trees that knew when to fall.

For me and for those who loved you

And are left to go on alone.

                                                                                            Love.

                                                                                                    Mom