Impermanence

Walking under the newly blossomed plum trees, watching the happy bees of this false spring, I found myself recalling a fragment of a poem I wrote maybe 30 years ago. Possibly more. I don’t even recall the rest of the poem, which likely sits in one of my crumbling notebooks and  in published form in some literary or academic magazine. Well, I could spend time sorting through the hundreds of poems to figure out where the fragment fits, what I was thinking, when it really was.

Maybe I’ll do that. Probably not.

The words are “impermanence alone is fixed”.

And sure, I know what I meant. We live in a world of rise and fall, of turns of the seasons, turning of the wheel. Beautiful things happen. Bad things happen. The white plum blossom drifts down like snow, and then there may be hard green nubs, and then sweet yellow or red or purple fruit, drawing the wasps, staining our mouths, sticky on our fingers, luscious to our tongues.

In the old days the news that ripped our lives apart came in letters & in phone calls & in people standing stiffly on the doorstep, faces fixed in a polite and terrible calm.

These days—perhaps a text message, a quick pixilated private message, a scrap of news, may turn the world over.

The trees keep blooming. I think you have to figure out what’s important. The flowers are here briefly. And so are we.

At our latest stop at the fancy medical place in the big city we met our youngest kid’s latest doctor. I loved the clouded emerald set in thinned gold he wore on his right hand, but you can’t very well gush “gee, what a fab ring! Family heirloom?” while the guy is confidently telling you that 10 years, maybe 15 years…there are new medications…endolthelin receptor antagonists, experimental program…

I told him I’d read some précis of his research. “I like rocket ships,” he said, “but I wouldn’t want to learn to build one”.

I did not say that the health of my youngest child was of grave concern to me and not really like a hobby. I figured he knew that. I said I felt better when I had as much information as possible. I don’t know how he took that; he promised to always be honest with me. Well, okay, that’s cool.

And we liked him, and his pretty ring, and his stories of England, and his firm disapproval of surgery for this particular case, this particular person, this being I held in my arms when he was born, drenched in wonder and exhaustion, his siblings and papa right there.

It’s a fragile place, you know, a top of the line medical research center. People rush about with internal calendars. Memories are just below the surface. Hope trembles on the lips and in the eyes. Hard to keep centered, sometimes.

But that’s the trick, in the turning wheel and the upheavals, in news from far away and tragedies in our front yards and aching hearts and aching legs.

Once I was a little girl, playing with imagined friends, my fine pale hair in my eyes. Once my children played under the falling blossoms. Once, well once upon a time I trusted nothing would ever hurt.

And I was wrong.

I’ve seen deaths, and loss, I’ve lived through a lifetime  of wars and damaged souls. People and things have slipped through my fingers.  They’ve been lost. I can’t rescue them, I can’t just break out the unicorns and dances, though I would love to. I’ve stayed up, haunted, through many a long night.

And I wouldn’t have missed it. And…well, in the moment, the air is sweet. The bees have gone into their hives for the night. Some I love are dead, some are far from me, but right here the cats are purring, my littlest kid sits with his papa, the dog is smelly and loyal and content, and life goes on.

For now, that’s enough.

At the Door

It wasn’t quite the wolf at the door. Still, the sound was huge, demanding, and scary.

I had been resting with my youngest, both of us newly returned from the children’s hospital in SF where dozens of medical staff (and janitors and clerks and people in the hallways) had flooded our lives with kindness, straight talk, & (for me) hastily produced tissues to wipe my streaming eyes. The sounds there were curiously both sharp and muted—the beep of machines connected to my boy, the steady purr of oxygen, his gentle breathing. I hadn’t slept.

And now, at the door, these heavy thuds. To tell the truth, I figured it might be my partner, back from the woods with armloads of firewood, annoyed at the locked door and unable to reach his key. So I rushed out, inwardly swearing at his impatience, but glad at the prospect of a warm fire.

I was wrong. A tall man with a jagged branch of redwood had hit the glass of our door with force. Twice. The pattern radiated like a spiderweb, but the glass held.   I opened the door to call out “what on earth are you doing?”  Next door a woman shouted, “no, get back in, he could hurt you”.

I watched him rush away into the cold and misty night, and went indoors to call 911. The young cop was kind enough when he arrived, shaking his head at what he figured to be a thousand dollars worth of damage, sympathetic to my desire that the guy get some help. He told me he’d been picked up quickly and would be taken to the hospital and then for some mental health care, and if I wanted to press charges, well I certainly could. I said I saw no point in jailing him, I was glad he’d get care.

I saw him the next morning, his arm stapled up (there was a knife wound), his eyes bewildered. He said he had no memory of the night before. “I did that?” he said, over and over, staring at the pattern in the glass. Yeah, I said, I saw you, it was you. 

I suggested maybe a bottle less each week of vodka might be wise. And, well, he could bring the money he’d spend on that my way, to add to the door fund. It seemed a good idea. To me, anyway; he didn’t seem all that impressed, walking back to his camp, unconvinced, telling me he needed a good place to live, telling me he was 70 (I said he seemed younger, he said, well, his birth certificate tells him he’s in his 50’s, but he remembers when his mom picked him up 70 years ago).

I’ve been looking at the broken glass a couple weeks now, waiting for the one glass person in our region to have time to repair it. It’s a pretty pattern. Everything interconnects. Light shining through makes little prisms. It still makes me feel punched in the stomach, though I tell myself how pretty.

And I worry about the guy, one of many who have no safe place to be, who walk through the pouring cold rain, who have no shoes, who howl at the inexplicable, obdurate world in which people laugh at them, throw things at them, whisper. Who go hungry. Who drink too much. Who sometimes die of small things. Who die small deaths daily. Whose eyes bear hurt. Who can’t remember, and it might be a good thing.

I think it is probably my own inner wolf, my own inner brokenness, my own desire to howl and rage at the world that finds such easy if complicated recognition of the stray and wild in our world; the little feral cat at my windowsill or the disturbed and raging man breaking my window-door.

When I have time to sit with all this, as I sat all night with my son, stilling my anxious heart, chatting with night nurses about their new children, their loves, their dying fathers…when I have time to go a little deeper, I find that I have so much longing for so much. For warmth for all those out in the elements, for a quiet place for each. For understanding that we are connected, all us broken little pieces with our bright edges. We belong together, somehow. Yes, even though sometimes we clash and bleed.

The country of dead leaves and tenderness

October has been my favorite month for as long as I can remember. Maybe it’s because when I was born I got through one day and then October clanged in, threaded with the nostalgia of a displaced New England mother longing for what she would always call “real autumn”. And October marks the birth of my first child, the birthdays of many poets (Keats, Thomas, Plath) and Halloween, all sweets and shudders and doors left open for children. And masks. You can be what you want in October.

We slid in past a full eclipse this year. My stepmother phoned just before October, on my birthday, to tell me she loved me and she wanted her ashes divided between her second husband’s grave and her third. My dad was her second husband; her third introduced her to a love of country music and made her laugh. October came. She died.

And my artistic love of 50 years ago died. And a garden friend. And a street advocate. It’s like there’s a party somewhere and everyone is rushing off before the refreshments are gone, or the music slows. I’m getting so I flinch at the sound of the phone.

And then…well, there’s the complicated one. The other morning I walked with a good friend down by the river and along the cliffs and into the woods.

The day was October blue. The mist had just lifted. The river is low, but enough for the ducks to enjoy. A heron and an egret were fishing, standing beside each other. At our approach the egret flared up and flew upstream. The air was sweet with the scent of water and poplar and melilot. There were birds singing. We came near a few camps and apologized, along the willows or in the circles of ferns. We walked on.

There’s someone missing from the October days. I get calls from out of state; there’s a worried woman. There’s a little boy whose daddy came to make money. There are friends who haven’t heard. There’s a turned off cell phone, and a whole lot of rumors, whispered, fearful, lurid.

In the October morning my friend and I went, clambering over fallen trees, pushing through brush, hoping the poison oak we were brushing against would be kind to us. We paused, sniffed, moved on.

We felt the moss beneath our feet, watched the glitter of the creek in the filtered sunlight, tried to figure out..by sign, by heart, by rumor, by luck…where this young father might be.

Yeah, I expected to maybe find a body. I hoped to find…oh, an injured guy. Or something.

The woods held their secrets for the moment. We thought, once or twice…is that the smell of death, over the smell of bay leaves and October sunlight. We told each other it could be…a squirrel, a bird, anything. The air eddied and teased.

Someone asked me today if I was grieving, wearing black as I am. I said the black was accidental. But my heart has been slammed, again and again and again, this lovely month.

And we are walking now towards the end, to All Hallows, to the spooks and masks and sweets. Day of the Dead, All Souls.

I don’t sleep well, these nights. Hey, if I should not be here, remember I love you. And..may all the lost, all the forgotten, all the beloved…be found.

***

There's a update, sadly. The body of my friend was found the day after I went looking; I did not climb far enough up the cliffs. His dog had stayed with him for four days after his death. He was murdered, my young man from Ohio. We are trying to get the dog back to a grieving mother far away who will love her.

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.