Only a breath

I forget my dreams a lot these days. They are wisps on waking, and I wake often, checking on my son or being checked on by a cat or two. The cats think the wee hours of the morning are surely dinnertime. Paw to the nose. Gentle push of breakable and noisy things onto the floor, or my head.

Changes in Gabe’s breathing wake me as well. I check the oxygen, the lines, the machine.

The other night Gabe was wide eyed, moving his sleep mask away. “What’s up?” I asked him. “Want water, need new pants?” I ran the mom litany. Gabe’s nonverbal mostly. I need to watch closely, guess wisely, have patience.

His eyes were wide. Anxiety. Holding my gaze he put his arms up. Hands up, don’t shoot. He then fell back, pointing to the imagined wounds in his side, very dramatically dead. And then opened his eyes. Hands up. No shoot.

Well, I hugged him changed his pants, got him water and a snack, hugged him again, adjusted the machines and kept the light on a while. At last he settled back to sleep.

I try not to let him watch the news, but with obsessed parents, well, things slip through. And news like Ferguson or Gaza or death anywhere goes straight to Gabe’s heart. And he seems to think we can make it better. And I think he must dream of these things sometimes, and I wonder what he thinks, really. And what can I say?

I wonder what other parents do. Dear god, I wonder what black parents across the country said to their kids after Ferguson, or any number of other events. What parents say in Gaza or…well, anywhere. We’re relatively safe and privileged. I take the easy route with Gabe, hugs, sustenance, maybe a book, a diversion, a favorite toy. The physical connection. It’s been our main language since I first carried him. I wait for his smiles, his glances full of mischief, his acts of small and knowing rebellion. I love it when he laughs. He never cries, he just sort of shuts down, goes away to some dream where I can’t follow, and I hope all is good there.

His dad dreams of strange cities. I know this because we often share dreams come morning. My dream wisps vanish, except…lately, I too was searching for something. I knew my key was fragile. My daughter was there, but going away.

I think of dreams a lot these days. My stepmother is sleeping a great deal, the result of stage 4 cancer. My sister sends me messages about the pancake she cooked for her mother, and how it was eaten (the first thing in a while). About the silver bangles. On my sister’s wrist now; they always jangled gently when my stepmother moved. I wonder what my stepmother dreams, in these longer and longer naps, in this moving away from us. When my father was dying he returned in his dreams to the planes he loved to fly, he was flying. I remember still his brown eyes fixed on mine, trustingly, as we breathed together, as I held him in my arms, as one breath followed another and then, then I was breathing alone.

The more I know, the less I know. Only a  breath. A hug in the night. Maybe happy dreams to replace all the pain, all the churning impossible news. Maybe only love. Maybe only silly cats, and friends, and strangers, and the dawn, all over our breaking world. Maybe only love.

We’ll hold it together. Somehow.

now while the world is burning

The air is thick with smoke. My heart keeps racing. The sunset is glorious, the golden sun haloed in shimmering orange, so pretty I am tempted to stare directly into it, and after I watch the sunset a while afterimages dart about everywhere I look, a black sun, a red one, dancing colors.

There are fires to the south of us and fires to the north. The Cal-fire map makes it look as if all of this part of California is blazing, as if all the hillsides are burning. Although I know rationally that the fires are miles away, that I am safe where I am, my body doesn’t seem to agree. The scent of smoke says “run now, get away, save yourself, quickly!”

It’s hard to concentrate. I keep checking on the cats, the dog, my son. I wonder how much I should worry about the smoke particles and his compromised lungs and valiant heart. I close the windows. I open them again, to get some air. The sky has turned flamingo pink and glowing and it is one of the most lovely sunsets ever.

I have flashbacks to the fire at the top of the hill when my children were very young, and we had no vehicle, and we needed to decide whether to walk out, down the hillsides, or stay put, praying that the fire would burn up and back down the eastern side of the hills, not to our tiny cabin, not to our refuge. We watched the planes laden with giant orange bags of water flying over, coming back to the river, flying again.

I wondered what to take. In these days of disaster preparedness we are supposed to have entire kits ready and evacuation plans and enough water for everyone for…I don’t know, lots of days…and flashlights and radios and all sorts of very sensible things. Back then..well, even if we had such a kit I couldn’t have carried everything. I was carrying a baby and holding a toddler by the hand. My eldest son was calm, and probably my partner was as well.  So I made my quick material choices: if everything is going to be lost, what do you need to save?

Well, obviously the children. And obviously the dogs. And though my heart was wrenched, I had no way to corral the cats and hoped they would be smart and find shelter.

Other than that…well, I grabbed an envelope of important papers, my notebooks, and the journals I kept for the children, which were full of photographs and musings: first smiles, long nights, astonishing sayings, sunlit moments and times of turmoil. And I think I may have grabbed my great aunt’s necklace. And a pen.  I think my partner similarly tried to save some manuscripts…memories are vague.

That fire never reached us. It was small, only a meadow fire, and quickly put out. Not like the acres burning now up and down the steep ravines, through the deep forests.

Everything is so dry.

My heart keeps pounding.

But I’ve been thinking…it’s good to know what’s important. What you treasure. What you’d hold to if everything else were lost. I gave those child journals to my children as they passed 21, and I think they had fun with them—those records of long ago days, the assurance that they matter, are loved, are treasured (and sometimes despaired of: “why is he still crying? Why can’t I tell?”). But I would have those things in my heart anyway. My own journals, my poetry—would I save it now? I don’t know. I gave my great aunt’s necklace to my daughter.

Leaving now…I’d take the cats, the dogs, my youngest son, who would of course want his papa close.. Maybe I’d grab a notebook on the way, and a good pen.

I should be more practical. I make a note to get my first aid supplies in order and remember where I keep batteries. I should store some water, put aside some matches, make sure my son’s medications are backed up.

But I know what I most hold to, even if the world is burning up. My loves, my vibrant breathing living ones, two footed, four footed.

Grab my hand. If there is danger, at least we will be together.

I ALWAYS WANTED A MAP.

I thought it should make sense, this life.

Children are pretty matter of fact. What is, is. I see it in the traveling families. Tonight we sleep by the road, tonight we sleep in a tent, now we must try to be quiet in the car. I saw it in myself, a military kid. Today we move across the ocean.

And maybe because I grew up traveling, maybe because maps were guides…well, maps and airport lights and beacons and static filled radio broadcasts—I have long thought of life in terms of travel. The dusty roads, the places we go, the people we bump into, share a moment with, remember, the journey ahead.

I always wanted a map.

When I was 8 or 9 I prayed a lot for guidance. I wanted an angel to appear, shiny and feathery, holding a map or maybe the directions that apparently were left out of my baby hand when I tumbled into this world, nicely wrapped in my caul, and totally bewildered.

The map would be large and scrolly. There would be some sort of ribbon, and there would be stars and dotted lines and maybe a picture or two. And the angel would point to a place marked You are Here and then show me, moment by moment, year by year, the paths my feet would take.

I saw it as sort of a tangled and meandering path, even then, but I knew if I prayed enough the angel would come, and certainly the angel would tell me what it was all about.

Because…well, let’s face it, it was all pretty confusing. Even to a fairly sheltered child. Death was happening, and there were things called wars, and my mother was not expected to live..and the angel just never came with the map. Other things happened that gave me some measure of peace, but…no map for a pilgrim’s journey.

Okay, I was an odd kid. But I think of that map that never arrived and I think we are making our maps day by day, step by step, all along the way. Our own designs, canny as any spider spinning. Our own trail of memories, encounters. Our own meaning, though maybe we’d never put it into words.

I saw the man early this morning as he rose from his shelter of bushes beside the freeway. He didn’t notice me, or my dog. We were well screened by redwoods, and on a higher road. He moved awkwardly, but I didn’t stop to stare. We had appointments with squirrels and stellar jays and ravens.

But I saw him later, sitting on a low wall. I nodded hello. He had kind, wary eyes. He nodded back.  When I next saw him, having completed my uptown errand, he was walking. And he was walking with a lot of pain.

I stopped. “Your leg is hurting you?” I made it a question, because it was ridiculously apparent that this was so, and probably my remark was stupid…but I needed to ask. Yes, he said. He said he’d broken his foot a few days before, and he was out sleeping rough and had no place to go, but he had made it to the local hospital.

They said there were two breaks. They said there wasn’t a thing to be done about them. They sent him on his way.

I told him about the health center and promised respect and…well, maybe there was something to be done? His knee was paining him a lot as well. Walking was hard. He figured…well, he’d heard there was a shelter up north and he thought if he could get the bus up there, and if he could have a bed, and if he could rest up a day or two…well, then he could go on.

He refused, gently, my offer of bus fare. I’m all right, he said. Just a little broken now.

I told him when and where the bus would come, and wished him a good journey, and a place to rest, and the ability to go on.

And here we are, all of us, on our journey. Not so far apart, though oceans might separate us, though some are in deserts and some in cities and there are crises and bombs and revolutions and terrors and great delights. And we are all, maybe, just a little broken, though we are lucky and our feet don’t pain us at the moment.

And no angel came with a big map.

But you know, I think I do know the way. It’s still confusing. Death is still around. My mother died…but after more years than we imagined. Things don’t make sense.

But it doesn’t matter. I take a step at a time. Sometimes I hold someone’s hand.  I try to love the journey.

the ground is rocky

“Um, no offense, not saying anything, but you are petting a dead kitten”

I told him I’m a bit strange. I think that energy lingers a while after death, that sometimes it is a slow and delicate transition.

And I kept patting the kitten, still telling it it was precious, it was wonderful, what a good cat it was.

He’d brought it by a while ago, cold & barely alive, rejected by its mother. But it had a spark; there was a strong pulse of life still there. When the cat opened his eyes and complained as I tried to massage it back to us, when he bit my finger trying to grab some wet catfood, I thought…yes. Yes, you will fight. You will stay.

The kid did all he could. He warmed the kitten against his chest in a pouch I hastily contrived of a knitted hat and some red ribbon. He offered food and water, eyedroppers if need be. The cat got to visit motels, carefully undercover, and pounce and play and be admired for his soft fur and his blue, blue eyes.

And eventually, upon waking in seizures, on a day with no vets open & no transportation, kitten and friend arrived on my steps as I was starting the day of paste up and editing and hard deadline.

Sure I’d stop it all for a kitten, for just a scrap of hope, for just one more breath.

Kitten learned to purr, and watch, and be fascinated by light, movement, this strange quick world.

I always thought it knew me and felt safe in my hands, and it was in my hands, to my murmurs of “you are a beautiful cat” that he died.

You don’t give up till the end.

And even then maybe you don’t give up.

Kitten (his name, bestowed only a day or so ago, was Joey Gizmo) is buried in my back garden, now with a potted Japanese maple marking the spot. The kid and I talked of death and ceremony. What do you do? I’d told him of my dad’s death (like kitten, in my arms). He told me how he hadn’t wanted to go to his father’s funeral.

Were you close? Well, yeah, he taught me a lot about ethics.

Sorrow and the scent of ripe, falling plums. These mark the day. Hard to know what to say. The ground is rocky.

Almost every day of my life someone asks about one passion or another, one cause, one struggle. They say pretty much the same thing. “Isn’t it a done deal?” “You can’t fight power and money” “No way one person can do anything”.

It’s kind of as if they are telling me I’m stroking a little kitten whose eyes remain fixed on mine, whose breath has just faded away, this mere handful of fluff & beauty. Why waste the time?

Well, you never know. And you can’t turn away. And though I wish with all my soul for the power to save, cure, and transform every hurting, dying, sorrowing bit of our universe I know what’s possible and what’s not.

And what is possible, what is always possible, is love. That’s what I’ll rest on and what I’ll keep on doing, in every breath and every soft or sharp moment. Living, dead, transforming world—here’s my love. It’s what I take from you and what I give back.

And Joey Gizmo, I was very glad to know you.

Trick or Treat

The peach tree gave sweet, sweet peaches for the thirteen years I tended it, though often folks walking by would hungrily strip it, and one year a guy in a white pickup pulled into the space beneath those fruit laden branches and sent his kids up to pick everything. Well, they must have been hungry, and in these days so many are, so I let it go. And it bore well the next year too, and the one after that.

Three years ago we moved the store, and I said farewell to the peach tree and the roses I’d planted, and to the other trees and bits of purest beauty. I’ve left a lot of gardens behind in my traveling life.

Last week the tree was cut; it was a shelter, I was told, for the homeless. A slender shelter at best, but there is a kind of logic that is hard on trees and flowers. I went to touch the stump the other night, and saw the scraped ground, and thought of upturned olive trees a planet away, and salted fields. It’s okay, I’ll plant another tree, and another. For each vanished one I try to plant ten or more, somewhere, in a personal balancing act against forces of..concrete and razor wire. Yes, sure, it hurt my heart. The trees I’ve cared for are close to me as friends, dear as my children; it hurts to see them fall. I can’t dwell on that pain, and I won’t; I’m figuring out where the next trees will be.

And I’m thinking, adept at distraction, of my favorite coming holiday, of the feast of masks and contradictions, in which we all can become anything we wish, in which the homes of strangers are thrown open, in which all children are loved and welcomed for a second or two into a circle of light and sweetness. It’s always been the best time of the year; the time of delicious thrills, of being a princess or a pirate, of sticky sweets and salted popcorn and running through the leafstrewn darkness confident that magic was in the air.

When I guided my own set of dinosaurs and princesses through the streets at night (and my firstborn paused to query whether the sweets had artificial flavor in them)…oh, for all those years how I was encouraged by the lit houses, the handfuls of candy, the flocks of little ghosts and goblins and fairies. I thought—and I still think—this is what the world probably should be like. Where our homes shine with light and every child is welcomed in. Where we can be whatever wonderful thing we secretly desire to be. Where perhaps our dead walk with us, and whisper to us, and tell us all is possible, have courage, taste the sweetness, walk towards that glimmering light.

Trick or treat? Hey, I’ll take both; I want to trick the concrete into blooming and bearing fruit, and I want to share all the treats of this lovely, impossible, heartbreaking world with those who hunger…for food, for love, for righteousness, for welcome.

Dreaming of Gardens

When I wake in the night and have trouble sleeping, when my thoughts race, when the past with its bitter sweetness and the future with its hope and torment consume me, I settle my heart by imagining gardens. Gardens I have, or had, or might invent someday. I shift the colors, I indulge in fantasies of impossible opulence—thousands of daffodils! A wilderness of roses! A maze of medicinal herbs, a walled garden of sweetness.

So when I went over today in the heat to talk to my new friend and to return some change to him, I understood at once how his heart works too.

He dreams in the language of gardens.

But let me fill you in. There’s a disputed place in my town, a would be park and garden. And by the grace of the universe and the generosity of good people I’ve been able to start watering in the height of summer, trees and roses, plants that fruit and flower.

And in the shade of a circle of oaks, on the hard ground or on the boulders, people sit and talk. Mostly a bunch of my friends. Mostly not rich ones, sometimes campers, sometimes travelers.

They’ve been eager to help. Something to be carried? Moved? Garbage to be picked up? My friends are there.

Yesterday I was deeply soaking the little fringe tree, concerned by the dryness at the growing tips, when a guy came over. “Bet you planted this tree, sister” he said. No, I told him, not me. Told him past and current history. Admitted I love trees and flowers with my full heart. He watched me try to reach another, more distant tree. “You need a second hose”. Yeah, I told him that was a great idea; I’d work on it. And he said “here, you get you that hose”. And he handed me a twenty.

He’s from Tennessee. Perhaps my age, more or less, though life has been harsher for him. Neck in a brace, shoes worn. Twenty from him was likely the equivalent of a thousand from a wealthier friend.

That’s why I was concerned about giving him his change back today. But he was having none of that. It was a donation, freely given. “You tell them an old homeless man from Tennessee donated twenty dollars to make this park beautiful. Tell ‘em that.”

And he said he’d had trouble sleeping—pain from his injuries, trouble on his mind. But then he thought of the park, of how it could be—the stone benches, the real sidewalk, the beautiful plants. How it would be so wonderful. “Wish I was rich” he said, “but I’ll get my reward in heaven”. I told him to please hold to that vision he has, of beauty, of people enjoying that beauty, of how this place could be. We need those dreams, those visions, those magical gardens in which all are welcome and all can flourish.

Breathing

I have been watching my son’s breaths since he was born, 22 years ago in a cabin in the woods, welcomed by his sister and brother and father, welcomed to a circle of light and peace by his midwives.

Nights watching your child breathe can be long sometimes. The terrors of pneumonia, the times I sat up holding him against my body, willing his breath to continue, in, out, in, moment by moment while the moon crossed the sky and the dawn slowly unfolded, with birdsong & exhaustion—those were times at the edge.

I almost fell. It was an April morning the last time I seriously considered an early exit from this beautiful and painful world, an exit in which I felt I had to take my fragile child. I am a good mother.

I sought and received help. But I have faced inner and outer bleakness, and these nights as I set up machines to help my boy relax and breathe and sleep, as I adjust the mask and hoses, as I time my heartbeats by the pulse of oxygen, and do not sleep, I consider this fragile world.

There’s a rush of image and information. There’s my throat closing with grief.

My son stopped speaking during the bombing of Gaza two years ago, first telling me he loved all his family but, as he said, “thinking hurts too much”. Be-fore that he had begged me to save the children, to stop the walls from falling, to deal with the wolves that came out of the air and frightened him.

Last night I read of two NATO bombings in Libya and I gasped with pain. Yes, one was the strike—such an innocuous word, like the lighting of a birthday candle—that murdered Khadafi’s 29 year old youngest son, and three grand-children under 12.

I felt the walls falling, as I do each time I see those dry reports across a geography of pain—a wedding party, a young soldier, a marketplace, a dance, a school, a hospital.

The other report from Libya was of the bombing of a school for children who, like my son, have Down Syndrome.

I remember a photo from Iraq, maybe 5 years ago, from such a school. Smiling children who looked a bit like Gabe danced in a careful circle, wearing bright paper hats, as the sky shattered with bombs.

Sometimes my son’s efforts to get oxygen to his heart and fingertips and brain only get him to a bit above 60% of the 100% oxygen the human body craves.

I think we are all gasping for air now. Gasping for hope, compassion, sense.

I watched the Royal Wedding as I timed Gabe’s breaths and monitored the machines. Such lovely lace, such luxurious satin. How sweet the little brides-maids, with their lily of the valley crowns, and how pretty the row of trees. Hornbeam trees, beautiful trees of the ancient British forests, brought into the abbey to make a pretty, artificial forest to delight our eyes. Oh, I love romance and happily ever after. Yes, I once was sure I was a lost princess, when I was four.

It passed the time, this wedding. For a while I didn’t think of children dying or truth tellers imprisoned, of babies without their mothers, of lost elders, of hungry people right on my own mainstreet, of despair. I just thought, gratefully, how pretty, my mind a wash of white satin and bridal bouquets.

And then I kept trying to breathe myself, adjusting the machines, the darkness there. My son was sleeping well. Dawn came again, with birdsong and a wash of pink light.

And I don’t know, really, what to do with this precious world but to love it. And I don’t know what to do with all the wrongs I see but name them.

And keep breathing.

A Revolution of the Beautiful

I realized the other night, sorting through articles & photographs, calming my despair over photos of oilslicked birds & stories of death, loss, vigilance--I realized that in fact I was born into an atmosphere of grief, into a world of mourning, into a culture shell shocked, guilt ridden, & desperate.

And so, perhaps, were you.

When I was born, six decades ago, in a military hospital while my father waited on call for duty across the world, when I was born my mother sobbed inconsolably. Because, she said, I was a girl.
I would have to bear the pains of womanhood in this world, where her mother had died not a year before from a botched operation.

Yes, her labor had been hard. I bear to this day a memento of my hard delivery.

And yes, she was expected to birth a son. What to do with the football and the cute boy-blue clothing?

My grandfather sent small pink roses.

So I came in on a wave of grief, and I learned to sleep to the sound of trains and bombers, and I learned to hate the sound of air raid sirens, and I loved the Japanese hillsides and not so much the Mojave plains, where we waited for the end of the world in the early 1960's. As an officer's family we'd have nice quarters in the secret underground bunkers, waiting out the post nuclear radioactivity. No problem.

I loved the flowers of the high desert and the snakes. And we didn't die, and my father warned me against commies and we fought our own sort of cold war. My brothers became soldiers.

One went to jail for murder. One, after his time in the missile silos, retired to raise corn and cows in the Mississippi bottoms. And life goes on.

And I've lived six decades of wars, learning geography through atrocity stories.

You too, maybe. Or two decades, or four, or seven.

We've been huddled here in a sort of darkness, trying to deal with it all the best we can, at the edge of this stream of sorrow and joy.

The young travelers come by, and the old ones, in increasing streams. Words of loss come from across the planet and echo everywhere. Volcanic dust, earthquakes, white phosphorous, oil slicks.

How do we go on? How do we hold to an entire world of passion and suffering and not go under, and not give up?

No, I don't have the answers. But I think we sit with it, as we would sit with a crying child through the night, looking out into the trees for light dawning.

I think we play with it, when we can, like the group of people in Belgium--200 strong, who arranged a sudden dance/son explosion in the middle of the Antwerp train station, singing and dancing to a song from the Sound of Music.

Or like the soldiers in Afghanistan who posted a preposterous and silly video taking off from Lady Gaga's Telephone. With their cardboard and duct tape costumes, in the moments between...oh, death and murder, boredom, despair. They were good dancers.

I think we try in every creative, every grateful, every compassionate, every determined way to keep going. To listen to what gives us joy. To act on that knowledge.

It won't change the world. It won't stop the storms. But maybe we can transform some moment, some thought, some action.

I walked through the cemetery with my dog and sat beneath a dying cedar tree to watch a young hawk fly over the graves and the flowers. I watched a long while, the early sun warm on my face, the scent of mown grass in my nostrils.

Before I become part of the dust that softens the edges of this world, before I am still, I want to care more, dance more, sing more, watch more free flying hawks, love more.

And since every breath could be a last one, and every word a last one, I am not going to be caught saying "I give up". With every breath I am going to be saying Yes. Or at least...maybe. And "I love" and "how beautiful" and "let's be silly,let's make a revolution of the beautiful, of small pink roses, of courage".

And what will you be saying?

(I wrote this a few months ago for the newspaper my partner and I publish each month. I felt I wanted to share it here as well. The photo is of one of my supervisors, checking to make certain the newspapers are cared for.)