on time

I've been full of phlegm these days, which I will willfully ascribe to the season and nothing more. It feels more like I live in a basement this week. We keep waking to crickets in the room or mystery bugs swooping at our faces. I trust they are not muscular spiders, which I like, as long as they are at least five feet from my face.
My husband has been busy. He's been remarkable. He keeps up with school and work and his band and doesn't fall apart. I fall apart on his behalf sometimes, but I'm getting used to and kind of really liking being the S technician. I keep him in clean clothes and make sure he comes to bed on time and feed him what he needs to eat and encourage him into a good rhythm and relish the small moments of time we do have together. I have to remind myself not to ooze with the sort of achy neediness that I know will (always) elicit a guilty response from him. It's not fair. He's doing what he needs to do. He needs to be a nurse. I need to be a support system. That kind of need. We'll be ok.
I am, though, leaving him to prop himself up for a week. Going on his family vacation without him, in fact. A week at the beach with his grandparents, parents, and siblings. And, incidentally, also my parents. I am not sure what kind of idea this is. But, the beach. Even without my husband, even with two sets of parents, the beach. That's what I want.

not like you

I still have that stabbing feeling of 'are you sure?' when I tell myself it's ok to be different. Ok to not because to transpose myself on top or someone else. Ok to have my own beat.

liminal

This is a liminal moment for my family of two, between one pattern of living and the next. S starts nursing school this afternoon, and I start filling in the gaps. I'm not sure how to frame this or anticipate it, and I hope the pavement over which my ankles bow is enough. I am seismically proud of my husband, and confident in him, and I'm feeling (when I get enough sleep) that the threshold here is the line between stasis and growth, comfort and adventure. I think this is what we need? I think I'll keep up, at least for the next week and a half. 

marrying

Miller wedding #3 is this morning. My sweet, deep-thinking, passionate golden brother found his match, and I didn't think I could love either of them more than I have in the years building up to this, but then I watched them yesterday during the rehearsal and changed my mind. 

Our people of the grass and tree and sky are unfortunately being chased out of a park and into a church for their ceremony because of thunder and rain, but you know it doesn't really change things in the end. I'm going to be there on and my breath is still going to catch and hold and I am going to watch them slide into one unit. I'm so proud of them. This is the real deal. 

I have a lot of room to grow

The corn is so tall on both sides of our country road that driving home is in a whispering hallway smelling of green and stickiness. I've gotten to know these turns.

In the foggy cool mornings I take off on foot in the opposite direction, running alongside cows and gravel ditches. I feel a sense of rightness and I feel my legs regaining some of their oomph. I feel almost like it's time to name myself a victor.

sanding down

We never stop falling to pieces, do we? We never come to a complete rest, a stasis, we continue to dissolve in the rain and the daylight. You might be a block of solid marble, veins of green and gold jagging throughout, and the corners rub off, the blocks crumble away bit by bit to reveal a stunning bust, a hymn to terpsichore, a liquid moment captured and saved in rock–beautiful, permanent, whole now that it's halved, and if the weather beats down further, all it will do is polish and refine, make dainty the already tight patterns. Or you might crumble like a river bank. Time sweeps higher every year, swells, froths and tears support from roots, sand from grasses, eating away at shelves and leaving behind the fingers of mud and bare roots exposed to the horizon. I am a muddy bank that has always been muddy. Nothing gains in grace.

I am still living. I have been feeling profusely these past few weeks, good and bad, and last night I psyche-vomited out all the feelings I had left, which left me just roots, husky and pink and incoherent and unable to make any sort of decision about going along/staying home/needing S/needing to be alone. I've done a lot of lying flat on my back on the floor.

I suspect this might sound like a bad thing. I suspect it's actually not.

I AM THE COWARD WHO DID NOT PICK UP THE PHONE

I am the coward who did not pick up the phone, so as never to know. So many clocks and yardsticks dumped into an ocean.

I am the ox which drew the cart full of urgent messages straight into the river, emerging none the wiser on the opposite side, never looking back at all those floating envelopes and postcards, the wet ashes of some loved one's screams.
How was I to know?

I am the warrior who killed the sparrow with a cannon. I am the guardian who led the child by the hand into the cloud, and emerged holding only an empty glove. Oh--

the digital ringing of it. The string of a kite of it, which I let go of. Oh, the commotion in the attic of it--in the front yard, in the back yard, in the driveway--all of which I heard nothing of, because I am the one who closed the windows and said This has nothing to do with us.

In fact, I am the one singing this so loudly I cannot hear you even now.
(Mama, what's happening outside? Honey, is that the phone?)

I am the one who sings, 

The bones and shells of us.
The organic broth of us.
The zen gong of us.

Oblivious, oblivious, oblivious.


-Laura Kasischke 

living

I am glowing with love tonight, even though S's car died in the grocery store parking lot this afternoon. Bro-in-law and all around astoundingly wonderful human being stepped in to save our milk and eggs, and the car was towed, and we have money in the bank to fix it. And I spent this evening talking for hours to an old/new friend, and sharing beer and playing cards and eating quiche and the last of the funeral cake. There are some people your heart recognizes, and she is one. I'm very rich in ways that matter, and my finger stopped hurting, and I have had the thought twice today that I'm really, really glad to be living, and living here. I am grateful.

setting down

I burned my tender guitar-string-battered finger yesterday morning and held a bag of ice all day until I set it down for the memorial service for a man who was stubborn and brilliant and more complicated than I realized, and who was a mentor to my husband for 15 years. He was forced to level down from living as an ambitious 90 mph musical phenom to desiccating in a motorized wheelchair when MS (there is too much MS) sunk its teeth into him. It finally killed him. There was a lot of laughter during the service, even so. S and his brother sat with me on our couch afterward and we ate chocolate cake and toasted to the memories. He taught them both so much about music and caring and what it means to be accountable. I don't think either of them really know yet what it means to not have him in their lives. I'm glad I got to meet him, and I'm glad I met with his approval. He would call S and tell him to hang on to me.

ok here

I married a wonderfully hard-working man, who comes home from a 12 hour shift and uncomplainingly deals with a basement--our home--dripping with last night's rain. Fans and wet-vacs and dehumidifiers and infinite patience. This evening I was inhaling (as I do) old photos of my father-in-law as the suave, two buttons down person he was at 21, and I feel a bit of a stab when I forget, sometimes, that he wasn't always in a wheelchair. But, oh, I feel lucky to be doggedly pursuing dryness and comfort and future with his son, the product of that confident grin. I am ok here.