Quarter of a million words
In any dictionary here
Three that you sometimes heard
In your city of birds
Larks and doves of song, fear
Quarter of a million words
The first, the second, the third—
Words we held like cards, my dear
Three that I sometimes heard
I recall it all: red dog, furred,
Flannel warmth, listening ear
Quarter of a million words
Were those three too soft, too slurred?
Too infrequent? Sweet, but sheer?
Three that we sometimes heard
I would give my heart: one word
To heal, to mend. One: strong, clear.
Quarter of a million words
Three that we sometimes heard

On the 4th of July, a stray dog was brought into the Brooklyn Center for Animal Care and Control. She had escaped from a burning building. The pads on her feet were burned off completely, her fur was singed all over, and she was covered in lacerations. No collar.

No one came forward for her.

Email came in from Nanette, dog rescue queen and friend of mine. She had seen this little girl’s face, and thought of our little family, our love of underdogs. Did we want to pull her before they euthanized her?

Those eyes told me all I needed to know. Those eyes, and the fact that she’d been nothing but sweet and gentle with everyone who had to treat her painful wounds.

Yes. Yes, we did, we would.

And yes, we did.

Meet Fanny, whose July 2010 has been pretty appalling. Burns, lacerations, no home, almost put down, reeking of soot, got kennel cough, wound up in a kind halfway home for dogs waiting for their real homes (thank you, Lawanna), got spayed, then onto a transport headed to New England. This little girl has been through the ringer. Her back is pretty mangled, as if she might have crawled through a broken window:

Sophie went with me yesterday to the Bennington Friendly’s parking lot, where we scooped up Fanny and her friend Molly from the transport van. Molly will be fostered by Sophie’s best friend’s family.

We were technically a “foster-to-adopt” family. Yeah.

A little more than 24 hours later, and we are never letting go of Fanny girl. Some things are just meant to be. I’m going to stop asking why.

WWHOHD?

What would Hestia or Hera do?

Oh, these H-gals are on ON MY MIND. It turns out that Hestia, not Hera, is the goddess of hearth and home. Hera is the goddess of marriage, motherhood, children. But I am grooving hard on both of these goddesses, at the moment.

I realize I have not cleaned the cat litter box for some time. Some kitty litter is scattered beside it, and the trail extends into the hallway outside the bathroom. I swallow the unpleasant conclusion: Eli has been, er, helping me keep it clean. Ugh. Clearly, I am no goddess of the hearth and home—not yet—although I love home with a passion, and I pine for a hearth with the fervor of Hestia. I yearn for a lasting marriage like Hera, even with a husband that tosses a lightning bolt now and then.

After a scary start to the beginning of 2010, my health is under control now. Now I want to change that ‘l’ to an ‘r’. I want me some hearthy goodness, stat.

My mom dispatched a friend of hers to help me with the air conditioners yesterday, after I nearly careened down the front porch roof on my stomach, chasing a runaway AC unit I tried to install myself. I managed to drag the unit and myself back through the bedroom window, but not without scraping up my decolletage and yelling bloody murder for the entire neighborhood to hear.

As mom’s pal put in a new electrical outlet (whaaaa? really? it’s that easy? would you like me to do you now? bed or floor?) so Sophie’s air conditioner could be plugged in correctly (too hard to explain coherently), I again had that intense urge to bake or knit some gratitude for the guy. Bring him a dirty martini on a silver tray. Sew him a monogrammed hankie with a Jesus fish on it. (He is a God-fearin’ man, with a God-fearin’ wife at home to do these things for him, but still.)

You know things are changing for me if I am having intense urges to bake or knit or sew, or use a cocktail shaker. Well, maybe the cocktail shaker reverie is nothing new. I just don’t have one.

If Women’s Studies 101 was all about women’s choices, then my liberal education was perhaps not lost on me. I am simply entering a new phase of life that happens, on the surface, to resemble the 1950s. But my innards are totally 2010, full of dark smarts and bloody wisdom.

As I was on my belly on the roof two days ago, clutching the tail of the air conditioner—swearing like a beached sailor whose ship is disappearing into the distance—I realized I was idiotically willing to go down with the air conditioner, skull first, before I let go of it. I was not going to be That Woman: the woman who, without the assistance of a husband’s biceps, loses the air conditioner and dents the roof of her car with it, spectacularly.

I needed help, I really did. And I pretty much suck at asking for help. See: Exhibit A, Friends Who Can Attest to My Hermetic Existence When the Going Gets Rough.

I want a partner in this life, for the rest of my days, because that is how I roll. Like the German shepherds I’m so crazy about, I’m a one-person creature, at heart. My inner circle of friends is small, tight, loyal. Most of them are one-person creatures too, and they don’t judge. I have never been a socialite. I can stretch myself, sometimes, but it will never be my way.

I am tired of worrying about creative success, financial success. I am tired of worrying about books that never seem to get written, or—once written—never get published. I am tired of query letters. I am tired of trying to drum up freelance writing and editing work. I am tired of my successful-enough (except for air conditioner installments) independentish single life.

I want to make crazy swinging-from-the-ceiling love to a sweaty, grinning husband who’s just mowed the lawn, just weed-whacked our property into tiptop shape, and re-entered our home through the new back door he installed. I want to bake brownies for him and the kids, from scratch. I want to buy one of those little torchie things and caramelize the top of a creme brulee for him, for his birthday. I want to knit him warm Icelandic wool hats that I line lovingly with fleece. I want to clean toilets, I want to keep track of our social calendar, I want to mend tears before they turn into rips. I want to research the difference between lemon oil and Murphy’s oil soap. I want to help with the family business, whatever that might be. I want to send Christmas cards and birthday cards, on time. I want to plan wonderful trips that end with us sighing and happy to be back home, framing and hanging photos of our adventures on freshly painted walls. I want to do laundry for days, listening to love songs, humming dreamily, writing poems in my head, while all my former dreams of grandeur and fame fly away like dark birds and disappear into trees. I want to immerse myself in a warm, milky bath of gorgeously outdated gender roles. I allow myself these fantasies, now.

At 40, I will dream what I want, without fear of chastisement or scorn. Nobody went around dissing Hera or Hestia. Uh-uh. Hellz, no.

I want to wake up with someone again. More days than not. When the dog barks at something in the backyard at 3 a.m., I want someone with me when I go to investigate. The people who have truly seen me, really seen me in this lifetime, are for the most part the ones I’ve woken up with, gone to bed with, snuggled for hours. Sex is fun and fine, sure, but real intimacy lies in listening to someone’s slow, sweet breathing as he falls asleep beside me.

I am Hestia. The pumpkin bread is on the counter. All yours, honey.

I am Hera, hear me roar. Put away your lightning bolts, and let’s play.

But first, excuse me while I polish the banister.

I dream of reunion.
Always and forever, I dream
of reunion, all that has been
lost becoming found.

At least, I dream of the
seeking. I rarely find what
I am looking for. I fear
this still, in my vertical,
blinking life.

Last night, I sought you.
You, who would never
expect a starring role
in these dreams—
not anymore,
not after so long.

I imagine you would smile
with some satisfaction,
reading this, if you thought
you’d spotted yourself, the
flash of your own bright
teeth, your emerald gaze.

I sought you in last night’s
darkness, I tried to make
you understand. I slowed you
long enough to consider, to
consider this, consider us,
consider what was and what
could be, instead.

Not unlike what I did, then.
And again, later in life.
Others. I have a way. I wish
I had a different way. I am
still learning. You have heard.

There were others,
had been others, for you, for me.
Pale blonde hair, yours, the
sun-bleached savannah
of which we’d joked,
once, many times.

You were surprised by
my others, in the dream.
Yet just when I despaired,
you grinned.

You reached for me,
reached for me as if
you had known all along
it would all be all right.

But, see, old love of mine,
it was not all right. Our
watches were out of sync.
Even in a dream. Know I
tried to stay with you.

But I could not help it.
Nothing for it.
I slipped from you,
into morning and
aqua sheets.

We did not ripen, sweeten,
side by side on the good vine.
Different vintages, but good.
Good, once. A good pair,
while we were. No better
word presents itself. Good.

Thank you for that. Thank you
for what I remember and for
what I don’t. I sip of you, still,
sometimes, and am grateful.

4:26 a.m. I am mired here: the same wanting,
wanting happiness at no one’s expense.

Impossible.

9:32 p.m.:
What is a heartbreaker?
S wanted to know,
days ago.

I said it was a word that people
used when they were being lazy, when they
refused to step outside of themselves, when
they stopped asking why might he and why
might she. That love is love and hearts are
bound to break.

Did anybody ever call you a heartbreaker?
she asked.

Probably, it has probably happened.
Blame is easy, I told her. It takes courage to
trace steps that lead to oneself and not away.
I never give my love without wanting to be the best
person I can be. It’s a tricky balance, looking out
for yourself and someone else at the same time.

She nodded.

Love can hurt, even when everyone plays
fair enough. She can see that in her
mother’s eyes.

4:26 a.m. Conversations, hours upon hours,
of what should have been said before, to
others, to ourselves. Yes.

You, hey, you there,
4:26 a.m. you,
you are more
evolved than I.

You say you are not cocky,
but I have made a life and
saved a life by reading faces
the way some people read
palms. I know me some
cocky, sometimes:
the hard uptilt of a jaw,
the slippery slope of intellect,
curling at the corner of a full,
set mouth.

You are patient. I am impatient
with your patience, because I
cannot say what I mean, not
yet, not like this.

We muddle, we grope for the
right words, gather them damply
from the miles and miles of paths
that have led us to This Here, we
offer them up in upturned palms,
pick through our abominations,
the necessary foolishnesses that
have led us to this.

4:26 a.m. You are not here but
you are. You linger as if you spent
the day here, in this bed, though
of course you did not. I could not
find the words tonight, only the
tears. The child me, she was too close
to the surface tonight, pricked her
finger on the edge of your worry,
the worry over my worry.

4:26 a.m., and all I can do
is send you something that
fits, something I hope will
keep you warm, someday.

I would tell you I know,
really know,
and I would not be lying.

I hope you would not find me
presumptious, precious. It is
messy inside this head and
this heart. You have seen
the chaos of the evidence:
the metaphor.

You have not seen the cellulite,
the crooked teeth, the wracked
sobbing, the fear, the pills—
some things do not travel
as well as others.
FDA regulations do not
permit reality in checked
or hand luggage.

I want to squeeze your hand.
I want to tell you I know about
two-sided coins, fine print, good
intentions, cracked glass, what-ifs.

I have driven this far in life
squinting more often than not
into the rear-view mirror,
moving forward only
in reverse.

I am circling my vehicle now,
climbing back inside. I have
removed the rear-view mirror,
discarded it on the side of
the new road. Animals will
marvel.

There is only so
much hindsight that
one can bear. I have
died of hindsight and
come back to tell.

You understand I am writing
to you. The rose. The pearl.
The moon. A shared ours:
The tides that we pull to us, hard
and fast and sure, then release
with shaking hands. Yes.
Saltwater is ours. No one
can tell me otherwise.

No one ever taught me this:
simple catch-and-release. You?
I envy those who pretend to know
the skill, those who swagger
away from their once-was,
no furtive glance over
a scraped, bloody shoulder.

Catch me looking. It’s all right.
I will catch you looking. We can
catch each other looking. I trust
those who share their lives
with a few ghosts.

I want happiness at no one’s
expense. Joy happens when we
are not paying attention to who’s
picking up the tab. I want it
to be otherwise. On TV, radiant
creatures suggest that it is
possible, that all is surmountable,
with enough commercial breaks.

I see you. A little. May I say that
I think you are beautiful?

I know that what you have created
and nurtured is beautiful.

I know the same warmth:
the weight of a child,
the calm after the ever-no storm,
a pair of tiny pajamas
fished from a hot dryer.
Pawprints and footprints,
fur and skin.

Maybe we could split the check?
Share the travel expenses
to this brave new world of promise
and pain and parting and so many
dare-I questions?

I speak the language enough
to make sure our coffee is always
hot and our wine is always red.
And if you can ask the locals
which way to the beach,
we’ll be set.

We can watch the
waves catch and release,
catch and release the shoreline.

Ah! Did I catch you laughing?
What? You caught me first?
Yes.

We both know that the
wind-tossed sand
always assumes
it’s the one doing
all that catching
and releasing.

I keep coming back here. I know *her* and I don’t. It’s ironic that I was cast in “On the Verge,” because that’s exactly how I feel these days.

I don’t know what comes next. But the storm within has subsided some. When I take a good look, I can see the image that’s perplexed me and been with me for years: a silver cord, running through me, and into the ground. It feels like truth, this cord. I can feel when I am speaking from it, words climbing the cord from my gut to my mouth to the world.

I like this. I want this. Only those words, for the second half of my life. Which begins in four days.

June 22 is my birthday. I arrived at a fairly prompt 9:02 am on a Monday morning almost forty years ago—ready for the work week. This has always amused me, as my life has not been full of regular work weeks, of the expected. This is a blessing most of the time; a curse when there is a large oil bill to pay. But I have managed, with help (YOUR help, very often—I am so blessed to have all of you in my life).

I think a new career is going to be necessary. I don’t have the answers, but I am collecting info: catalogs, stats, word-of-mouth job experiences.

I am figured out that I am mostly a rockin’ mom. As I walked through a parking lot the other day, one girl firmly attached to each hand, simply because they wanted to, I thought, Maybe this is the best I will do, and that is good enough.

As for love, I am not ruling that out.

For a while, I thought it best to accept that maybe my dream of growing old with a partner would simply not come to pass. Besides having children, there was nothing I wanted more than this. I wished for it every year on my birthday candles, for as long as I can remember: a happy, loving, creative, forgiving, changing, evolving marriage, to “my best friend.” It was an odd thing for an eight-year-old to wish for, and it never changed for me.

I got my wish, for a time. And it was good. Beautiful creatures sprang up beside us.

Now that time has passed. And one despairing week two months ago, I decided to try to make friends with my future self, a different dream. I meditated, visualized: me, the very single, very happy, pigtailed, white-haired wise woman in the Nova Scotia cottage, visited often by those she loved and who loved her right back.

Life is funny. Once you really let go of a dream, the universe has a way of saying, “Nice job, Grasshopper. Here’s the curveball. Catch.”

I decided to play ball. Caught the curveball. It was fast, too.

Now, I can hear the quiet before the something.

At 9:02 am Eastern time on my birthday next week, I will be hearing a beautiful new quiet. I will hear what dawn sounds like over the vineyards of southern California, from a perch in a hot-air balloon.

I am ready to fly. One need not be ready, but simply ready enough.

Happy 40th birthday to me. This could get interesting.

I love you all. Thank you so much for being such a huge part of my life over the past five years, here at the blog. You have quite literally, on numerous occasions, saved my life.

I am absurdly polite, at all times, especially during matters of life and death. During childbirth, I smilingly reassured the nurses I would be happy to clean up my own blood and body fluids from the floor, if they would only give me a few moments to deliver my baby first.

Absurd. It is part of my charm and part of my doom. Charm and doom battle it out in me, constantly. Doom glowers and weeps, while charm flounces. They drive each other mad.

Two years ago, I was nearly mad. I was quite prepared to Virginia Woolf myself in an icy November river. I figured I would not need the stones in my pockets, that the frigid water would take care of matters.

I don’t remember what the last blow was, the one that finally and irrevocably crushed the person I used to know as myself.

In the middle of the night, I made it down the slippery riverbank and calmly assessed my chances. I touched the cold current with my bare feet.

I was out of my mind with grief. I could not imagine at that second that I could offer anything to my children but burden, that I was anything but a sorrowful wraith of a mother, a ghost already, useless to them and to everyone in my life.

I am darkly amused by people who argue that those in suicidal states of mind are selfish. Most who take their own lives cannot imagine, in that precarious moment, that they will ever have anything to give again. When all they want to do is to be able to give, again. To the people that they love, to the people that they are certain they are causing only misery.

Unbearable loss and utter uselessness were all I knew in that sliver of time.

Someone spotted me. That person wrapped a blanket around my shoulders. And I walked (was walked?) away from the river, into a warm home that was not mine. To begin again.

Slowly, for the past few years, I have tried to rebuild. I have tried with mixed success to let go of what no longer lives, what no longer exists. I am still sifting through the rubble. I try to use what I can, and drop what I can’t.

My life now: I wince easily. I flinch. I duck. I double over. I gasp at what I find, and cry at what I can no longer find. I hold my own truth up to the light. Sometimes, I can see right through it. Sometimes, it blocks out the sun.

You would have seen me as hopeful, as optimistic, once. You might still see me as so, upon first glance. Polite people are frequently seen as optimistic. It’s optimistic to thank the server before the food comes, after all.

I have tried to make intelligent choices in this lifetime. I have not always managed that. But it is not for lack of effort. Not everyone would agree.

It is difficult to plead effort.

I made a choice recently: to suspend my disbelief, to say yes to something, simply because a “yes” resonated in me, chimed in me like something I once recognized as happiness.

I try to speak my truth, my understanding of my peculiar life path. I try to articulate the course of events that led to my recent choice. I try to explain this odd feeling of new-almost-joy to a few family members and friends.

It has been beautiful to laugh again.

I would like those whom I love to laugh with me, if just for this month, the month of my 40th birthday. I want to believe I am old enough and worn enough to pick my foolishnesses wisely.

We get to think of life as an inexhaustible well. Yet everything happens only a certain number of times, and a very small number, really. How many more times will you remember a certain afternoon of your childhood, some afternoon that’s so deeply a part of your being that you can’t even conceive of your life without it? Perhaps four or five times more. perhaps not even that. How many more times will you watch the full moon rise? Perhaps twenty. And yet it all seems limitless. —Paul Bowles

“The halfway mark,” I said to R today. “Almost 40.”

“Halfway, if you’re lucky,” he said.

“Or unlucky,” I said, “depending on how life’s treating you.”

He smiled. R has been there for me for years now.

He is steady goodness, wry wisdom, a kind challenger and friend.

I have been thinking about the concept of a Rain List, instead of a Bucket List. Things of beauty that have already rained down into my life’s pail. Puddles of joy. Pools of happiness. Little lakes of bliss.

We need this rain to keep going.

I have been lucky.

In 2007—just before dawn and after a bad, scary dream—Sophie said to me, “I think you and Daddy were meant to be together and so you had the exact babies you were meant to have together.”

Yes. She was right.

I don’t want to make the same mistakes again. Out with the old, in with the new mistakes. We screw up perpetually as humans, but I figure it’s personal growth if the mistakes begin to look different, less patterned, less predictable.

Thank you to all of you beautiful raindrops. I can still see you, hear you, touch you, and I am so grateful.

Dear Sophie,

You and I will remember different things of this day, of this May 12, 2010.

I want to write something of it down for safekeeping—something I can give to you, something to help you remember your courage when it’s slipped your mind in the future. Courage has a way of slipping after a few setbacks, a few hard knocks. No one’s fault. It’s just a difficult life, sometimes. I would tell you I wish I could protect you from life’s difficulties, you and your sister both, but in truth, I would be doing you no favors. You’ve already experienced more than your share of life’s bumps and losses so far, and in spite of this (and, I think, because of it), you are becoming yourself in beautiful fashion.

Sophie, my love, may you forever remember that what you did today was your idea. Your quiet courage and your belief in yourself compelled you to enter today’s school talent show, and my baby, did you ever shine.

You stood before the entire school (“knees knocking,” you told me later in the school parking lot, but I didn’t catch even one knee jiggle). And accompanied by dear Mrs. P on her ever-ready guitar, you sang “Somewhere Over the Rainbow.” Alone.

I told you that if you had gotten up there and forgotten every word and every note I still would have been the proudest mama around, just because you dared to try. I stand by that. I will be there cheering you on, on forgotten-word, forgotten-courage days, as long as you need me to be.

But today was not one of those days. Today was one of those sweet days, when the words and the notes come, and the courage shows up to steady those knocking knees, just when you need it.

Your daddy and I started the day in a law office, and then laughed to find ourselves the first ones waiting outside the upper-school building at your school. Life is not what it used to be, but it is something different, and we will all find our way.

Your daddy and your Babci and your sister and your teachers and your friends and your schoolmates and your schoolmates’ parents and I were there. Did you see us all? The whole school community was there. Could you feel us smiling?

You moved us, honey.

It is one thing to hit all the notes. And it is still another thing to remember to take deep breaths and keep your shoulders down and stand still. (Those busy hands of yours played only slightly with the lovely white skirt Daddy found and washed for you, and I have never loved those hands of yours more.)

Yes. It is one thing to sing a song well, by the rules. It is a gift.

But it is another thing entirely to move people with your song. It is a gift on top of a gift.

I, your beaming mama, well—you know my happy tears were bound to leak out. But it wasn’t just me, honey.

You touched the hearts of a lot of people today. My goodness. If only you knew. I’ll let them tell you.

I will tell you something else:

Today, after you sang the last sweet, high note, you smiled. I now thank God that Babci brought her funny video camera, because I want you to see the smiles for yourself, in stop-frame slow motion.

There was the shy “thank you” smile for the applause so loud it surprised and delighted you. There was the “I’m bowing now” smile. And amid your classmates, who welcomed you back to your seat with high-fives, there was an elated smile, and a laughing smile of relief. But in between the bow and the high-fives, Babci caught on film another smile: a smile that belongs to you alone. I hope it stays with you always. It is the “hey, I really DID that” smile.

I don’t remember seeing anything so very beautiful for a very, very long time. I hope it felt as beautiful as it looked, honey.

Baby girl, you DID did it.

I have never done what you did today. Holy cow.

You are my hero, sweet, wise, brave one.

Later at a celebratory dinner, sitting in the big upholstered chair at our table at the ’6 Pub, you told me today was the proudest moment of your whole entire life. And later still, when Babci face-planted in a chocolate mousse tart and we were all laughing hysterically, you said it was the happiest day of your life, too.

I think you will have many proud moments, and many happiest days. I wish this for you more than I will ever be able to put into words.

But I wanted to write it down for you, just in case. I don’t remember the exact date of your first smile, and I’m sorry for that. (I know it was when I was crooning to you while nursing: Mommy has BIIIIIIG BOOOOOOBS.) But I remember this date, May 12, 2010, when you smiled a gorgeous “hey, I DID it” smile.

You told me you can’t wait to do it again next year. You told Hannah you would love to sing with her next year. (She’s thinking it over, I can tell.) You didn’t want too much fuss over yourself, because you knew your little sister was feeling out-of-sorts, a little jealous. She wants to try things, but at six, she is so afraid to make mistakes.

When the time is right, she will stand up, despite knocking knees, and I know you will be beside me and Daddy, cheering her on. She’ll find her own way, her own talents (we already see how she shines — she just needs to find her footing, find her core). With a big sister like you, so empathetic to her needs, yet pursuing your own dreams, I think she’s going to learn a lot from you. We’ll help her find her way.

And my offer to make Orphan Annie rag costumes and choreograph a scrubbing-the-floor song and dance (we can practice LOTS on OUR kitchen floor) still stands.

I love you with all my heart. Thank you for sharing your talent with all of us there today. I can honestly tell you that it was an honor to be there and hear your sweet voice create a rainbow in that wide-open room.

It sure is an honor to be your mama, baby girl.

Love always,
Mommy