from upstairs:

*CLANK* *THUD* *CLONK* *BONK* *CLUNK*

me, downstairs:
“You GUYS- GO TO SLEEP!  QUIET NOW!”

“Sorry, Mom!”

~pause~

*THUD* *STOMP* *STOMP* *STOMP* *TOILET LID BANGS UP*

“HEY!  BE QUIET, CHILD WHO IS PEEING!!”

“Sorry, Mom!”

*TOILET LID BANGS DOWN* *FLUSH* *STOMP* *STOMP* *STOMP*

(Incoherent boy babble from bunk beds.  A few more thuds.)

“BOYS!  BE QUIET AND GO TO SLEEP NOW!  AARGH!”

“Sorry, Mom!”

“I DON’T WANT YOU SORRY- I WANT YOU QUIET!”

This is the phrase that comes, soft and repetitive as a mantra, as I put my feet in the icy ocean water on Thursday.  “Leave Your Mooring.”  My feet are numb in minutes, and I wonder how I’ll get in with a surfboard in a couple of weeks if I decide to join my instructor for a few days’ refresher.  “Leave Your Mooring.”  Waves slap my shins and my breathing coincides with the movement of the sea.  In and out, in and out, slow and sure, unthinking- just doing.  My counselor’s recent words echo in my ears curled up with nautilus salt sounds: “Wherever you go, you will be okay, but you must leave the dock.  Just go, start out, and wherever you end up will be all right.  It will be Right.”  Untie The Ropes.  I don’t even have to start the motor, right?  No paddles necessary yet- I’m not that brave.   Just Untie The Ropes and begin to move.  Right now- and for the past seven-point-five years-  I have not moved.

The frustration this moment is that I know this is my own 21st century version of Jacob wrestling with God.  Remember the story?  (Genesis 32)  This is a low point in Jacob’s life.  He fears his brother, Esau, possibly coming to kill him, so he stays alone on one side of a stream while sending his family to camp on the other.  He has nowhere left to turn.  In the night, a man comes and Jacob wrestles with him.  It is historically suggested that this “man” is actually God.  Jacob must put up quite a fight, because it is daybreak when God finally dislocates his hip (leaving a permanent limp in some versions) and still Jacob won’t let go.  Jacob demands a blessing.  I like to think, from what I know of Jacob, that this is his absolute moment of surrender.  (He certainly deserves one, my judgmental brain thinks!)  He cannot go on without the Blessing, and Spirit gives it as soon as he asks.  His name is changed on the spot from Jacob, meaning “cheater,” to Israel, which means “he strives with God,” or “upright with God.”  He has made it through the dark night- metaphorically and literally- and he awakens on the other side of the stream, which has a whole new meaning now.

I love this story.  I love to think that in one fell swoop, in a matter of a few hours, God could sashay down from on high and give me a lickin’ that will adjust me to proper tickin’!  The part of me that is tired of constant striving- like the diet that just won’t yield the desired results- would embrace even a few days of such a tussle.  Truthfully, it just continues to be a process for me, but with some subtle changes of late.  There are messages I cannot ignore.  There are realities pressing in that threaten the integrity of my deepest Self.  I must act, or perhaps face years of denying what is Truth, and this will wither me.  Perhaps my hip has been touched and I am limping slightly, and I am finally ready for the face-to-face.  The alternative is unthinkable, finally.  Leave Your Mooring.  Something has to change.  I must be braver than I have been, and trust that I will be fed wherever I am led.  Heck, I just have to trust I will be LED.  Because I will.  I know this in my inmost places.  I am just biding my time in KNOWING, instead of ACTING it so.

To re-phrase the Byrds’ lovely lyric:  there is a time to read so many, many spiritual books; a time to listen; a time to write and fold the papers and put them away; and a time to take them out, polish them up, and send them off.  There is a time to put all that you know into practice.  To not pull out any more resources to see what they suggest about what to do next.  You see, your Deepest Self already knows Truth.  She has written it from the beginning of time, abides with it outside the realms of time and space, and speaks it even now.  Just trust.  And Leave Your Mooring.  Now.

Luke, age 9, slightly agitated:  “Hope, I swear on GOD’S HOLY BIBLE, in the name of JESUS and GOD, I didn’t do it!”

Hope, age 7, cool as a cucumber:  “Well, you’re going to hell.”

I love this job.

Happy Earth Day!  :-)  It seems the celebration is more relevant this year personally because I have been doing more research and reading about environmentalism, diet, sustainability, and alternative fuel sources.  I’d like to recommend that we all increase our awareness and activity as we go great guns from spring into summer (perfect timing to add more raw fruits and veggies, and perhaps plant a tomato plant in a pot on the patio).

My oldest daughter and I watched a movie last night called Go Further.  It’ s a documentary-type fun flick about a 1000 mile bike trip actor/activist Woody Harrelson took with a few of his friends back in 2002 (movie includes lots of extras, like a Dave Matthews interview).  Woody has a terrific website with loads of links to encourage sustainable living.  Who knew worm composting could save an average of 728 lbs. of landfill waste a year per family of four?!  (Plus, it’s really easy.  Check out the worm woman!)  Also, did you know industrial hemp isn’t the same plant as the one grown for smoking?  So why aren’t we growing it in our country- saving tons of pollution, trees, and adding a wonderful food source?  This is crazy, people!

My family just introduced safe reusable water bottles, began using reusable grocery sacks at the store, and we are buying more organic foods (yes, it’s expensive- that means I make us eat them instead of letting them rot in the produce drawer in the fridge!)  So take 30 minutes or so that we might spend in front of the TV today, and let’s check out some green websites, and some ideas to reduce our carbon footprint.  It’s easier than we think!

The Journey

One day you finally knew
what you had to do, and began,
though the voices around you
kept shouting
their bad advice–
though the whole house
began to tremble
and you felt the old tug
at your ankles.
“Mend my life!”
each voice cried.
But you didn’t stop.
You knew what you had to do,
though the wind pried
with its stiff fingers
at the very foundations,
though their melancholy
was terrible.
It was already late
enough, and a wild night,
and the road full of fallen
branches and stones.
But little by little,
as you left their voices behind,
the stars began to burn
through the sheets of clouds,
and there was a new voice
which you slowly
recognized as your own,
that kept you company
as you strode deeper and deeper
into the world,
determined to do
the only thing you could do–
determined to save
the only life you could save.

� Mary Oliver. Online Source

Sexy is not
sitting in the Planned Parenthood office
with their industrial blue carpeting and
hastily-painted beige walls
(though the trim is bright-white, and the pale maple furniture
slightly cheery)
waiting to go pee in a cup and be pronounced
Positive or Negative
or put my feet in the stirrups and feel the long q-tip
swab tender places deep inside my gut
until I want to squeeze the exam table paper to shreds like
tiny parade-day confetti lilting to the unforgiving tile floor
but I bite my lip and try to breathe…
“Standard STD screen,” the nurse passes the slides to the assistant.
That’s my life, right there, I want to say- and I don’t want it back with any changes!
Just give me back the same, please, pronounced all Negative, thanks.
Breathe.

Sexy is
you and me
legs twisted like stripes on a peppermint stick
sheets a tangled cotton rosette
at the end of the bed, damp and fresh
voices soft and husky, touches gentle
as a spider’s leg looking for the next footfall on a blade of grass
and we lie here marinating in our own sweet juices-
time slower than pouring molasses to make gingerbread-
soft blue spaces filled with dozing
and the reassuring pressure of
your arm across
my hip.

Museum of Naval Aviation, Pensacola, FL
8/7/07 2pm

I am in the cockpit of a T-2 Buckeye, thinking about your training flights which happened just around the corner from this building. Remembering all those index cards I helped you memorize- emergency procedures, landing protocol, etc. You knew all of that information forward and backward. It blew me away that you learned all of that. By heart.

In chasing your dreams (Affair) you killed mine. After 9 years, this was my life- I was firmly entrenched and committed. It’s what I’d been trained for. It’s the life I had, too- it wasn’t just yours! Names of planes still run together in my mind~ F-4 Phantom, A-6 Intruder, C-5 Galaxy (this made sense the night one flew over our small apartment on the beach- watching it fill the skylight in the dead of night, so big and slow I thought it would certainly fall from the sky on we three- for our daughter was there, we just didn’t know it yet). I gave my life to yours- I gave my dreams to you. I put them in a cardboard box, closed the lid with tape and gave them to you for storing. You put them high on a shelf in the closet, marked them “Save for later,” not “Discard.” I thought that was Real.

I put my energy and love and support into your life, your career, your focus, and our children and home. I think all the time about how you abandoned the children, but I seldom think about what it did to me. So many spouses leave each other, really, who cares about that when there are children involved? As long as both parents keep the children the primary focus- and you didn’t, and that’s what slayed me. But today… today I was reminded- as I always am when I get near the military- that while I didn’t sign the papers accepting a commission to be an officer in the U.S. Navy, I might as well have, for I was not just the mercenary wife (and we’ve both known some of those) but the involved one. The one who read and re-read and edited your fitness reports and letters and documents. The one who got up at 4am to make breakfast for you before a pre-dawn brief when she couldn’t stomach the thought of food, eight weeks pregnant with your first child. The one who made food for squadron-mates when they were ill or had new babies. The one who filled in blocks on a quilt to send off when you were at sea for four months, or six. Who quietly nursed the baby in the middle of the night thinking about how to fill the next day for the other two babies sleeping. Who vacuumed the house Saturday morning while watching all the daddies in the neighborhood mowing the grass, or playing catch with their kids, or packing up for a day on the beach, or the boat. We had no Saturday Morning Daddy. We had no Anyday Daddy for twenty-six weeks straight, and that year for probably a total of almost forty weeks if we add it up. Maybe more. I avoided the calendar.

Today, sitting in the cockpit of that trainer, and watching our kids in a Blue Angels simulator (remembering your description of their brief- which still awes me- and thinking about Chicken Bone, who died in one of those blue jets) and thinking of standing there next to you in that very atrium of the museum I was now chasing our kids around- today what you did to my life, to me, was not okay. Fifteen years ago I stood so proudly in that atrium, in that awful blue maternity dress you were angry I spent money on (but it was on sale, and what was I going to wear to the ceremony?), eight months pregnant with our daughter, watching your father pin your wings on your uniform and wondering- though doubting, and convincing myself it was okay if you didn’t- if you had bought me the gold aviator wings on a necklace, as I’d seen around the necks of other aviator’s wives (you hadn’t- you’d run out of time- a punch to my gut). Today it was not okay that you really smeared my life through the dust while you were at it recreating (both definitions) yours.

Seven years ago we were chasing our kids around this museum- one yet unborn but present- and I was unaware that Someone Else had joined, in a sense, our marriage covenant. I was tucking our children into bed in a cottage on the beach that vacation, while you were running off to (uncharacteristically) buy things~ more pails for the beach, her favorite ice-cream for your pregnant wife, another pacifier for our youngest son. But really to just make phone calls to the Affair. To affirm your love and affection, and to declare yourself, again and again, a malcontent in the current state of your life (married, with children). You were swinging your fists, but I was blind with the sweat running into my eyes, and deaf with the lullabies I sang to our sweet, sweet babes, and dumb with just never, ever, EVER thinking This Could Happen To Me.

Flight bags, flight suits (”I wear pajamas to work!” you guys always said), flight boots- all of it floods my senses with the most piquant deja vu. I was here before, I did all of this before, I wore different skin, I was a different thing. You left, and ripped from me this major part of my identity, and you took it and I’ll never have it back. It was as if you took an organ- maybe not a major one, as I am still alive and functioning- but a lesser one, and I suspect I will always, in certain circumstances, feel the void. I am no longer a member of this Club. My children are still the sons and daughters of a Naval Aviator, but I’m no part of it- nor is my part acknowledged. It’s the sucker punch I never could’ve imagined.

In the museum store, the children are racing to and fro looking at the offerings. “What’s this, Mom?” asks Hope, my Seven. As always, I’m saved by Hope. “I think it’s a bouncy ball,” I reply, as I pick up a blue-and-green ball from the bin, “And look, this one is the whole world!” “Made in CHINA,” she retorts as she runs off. I look down at the ball and see the word CHINA stamped over South America. My burst-out-loud laugh saves my day. Mirth is still mine in these aviator’s children; I grabbed my cardboard box as you went out the door, and it’s time to blow off the dust, rip off the tape, and bravely pull back the lid, losses be damned- for perhaps they are gains for us all.

My wittified daughter has a blog!

www.veryveggiesafe.wordpress.com

Be sure to leave a comment!

I find myself in the same place I’ve been a few times before (but with different players): washing you off in the shower. I rinse my hair really, really well (I shampooed it this morning- well, you did, but now it smells of your cigarette smoke), I grab the body sponge and some bath gel and scrub, scrub, scrub my arms, my torso, my legs, my feet. I rub my face with soap, then face scrub. I am baptized in the shower, where yesterday I was in the ocean thinking it was my get-clean moment for a long time to come. I was wrong.

Somehow I lost myself for 24 hours and thought things that were deal-breakers for me could, somehow, not be. I allowed the fantasy to take hold completely, though I kept my eyes wide open, also. I measured what they took in: literature, habits, environment, past. Words always suck me in, though~ and you are good with your words. When you responded with “the hierarchy” when I said “Maslow.” When you kissed me in public with no thought to whomever you might know standing around (and you know yourself some people- yes, you do). When you shampooed my hair.

I have returned to reality with a shot. Seven hours ’til I get a message- and then it’s a text, not a call, not an email (I prefer email, btw). I know, your child is there I guess (though a girlfriend of mine points out that one date- while long- does not mean you are not also talking to other women, that there have been no other women who had been with you recently who were watching for a call, an email, a text over the 24 hours we were together… how could you have known you would spend 24 hours with me when I came in from the ocean to your lovely offer of a hot shower?)…….

I’ll keep waiting. You have many qualities that make my heart leap and my mind joyful. You have a few habits I find downright disdainful. You seemed to care a great deal- I wish I had not mentioned the picture, or the smoking. You responded respectfully and- dare I say it?- with great thought and care to both. These are not my business. I would not ask anyone to change for me. I don’t know if I could- at this point, and almost ten years younger than you- change for anyone else.

I will keep waiting for the right man. And in the meantime, I’m glad we had our time.

His chest is broad and barrel-like; his shoulders are wide and sturdy.  The tree-trunk legs bespeak his half-century earlier career as a firefighter, a rescuer.  His strength and the quiet power of his physicality are still apparent, only a bit slowed.  The shock of white hair that covers his forehead adds dignity even when one notes the hearing aids in both ears.  He just turned 94 years old, and he now lives alone at the end of my street.

I met Ted and Margaret in the fall.  I’ve lived down the street for three years, and I’ve often seen them outside in their yard, or getting into and out of their truck.  I just hadn’t ever gotten around to “meeting the neighbors.”  I was always rushing hither and yon, there was never the time.  One afternoon as I drove by and saw them watering their freshly seeded grass, I realized I’d lived here 3 years and I had never said hello.  When exactly did I think my life would slow down to accommodate all my whims?  I decided to walk back down and say hi.  I stayed for over two hours.  I couldn’t believe it when Margaret told me they were 93- “You don’t look a day over 70!” I exclaimed, honestly.  (Later, I tried to decide in my head if this was a backhanded compliment to a woman!)

Margaret was in a wheelchair but very able- her lower leg had been amputated eight years prior.  Her bright blue eyes and silver fox hair pulled back into a wispy bun gave her more an impish, sprite-like look than a wizened one.  She was exuberant life in an almost century-old body.  Her animated face and hands pulsed with electricity.  She was glad for the company, and I was honored to share her time and thoughts.  She talked about when they’d first moved to the neighborhood, and the way it’s changed.  She talked about divorce once she heard I was a single parent, exclaiming frequently from then on anytime I saw her, “What WAS he thinking?” about my ex-husband.  She spoke with poignancy about the family she didn’t get to see much now, scattered as we all are in the twenty-first century.  She spoke with love and a bit of teasing in Ted’s general direction-  I couldn’t tell if he didn’t hear her or had just perfected selective hearing over the last 70 years!

I took my children down to meet them that weekend, and we sat in the parlor.  Margaret insisted everyone take a handful of cocktail peanuts, and Ted talked more than I’d heard him before.  He talked about being a firefighter, and his children.  Margaret looked around periodically with an exasperated gesture and said, “They don’t want to hear all about YOU!”  But I did.  Almost a century of stories.  The things they had seen.  After a bit, Margaret looked around and then grabbed my twelve-year-old son’s hand (the child closest to her, who had been the most receptive to the peanuts) and said, “What WAS your father thinking?  To leave all of you?  To leave your beautiful mother?  To walk away from you children?”  I felt the sting as my son’s head gave a little jerk.  This was unexpected- a slap from a woman who did not know him, a kidney punch from the grandma in the wheelchair.  I felt the hotness behind my son’s eyes, and he blinked for a moment like a baby just come into sunlight from the womb.  “It’s okay,” he said strongly, “It wasn’t really like that.”

After a moment, I explained we had to go.  I hustled everyone out the door, and turned to say goodbye.  Margaret said it again, the refrain that was helpless to not spring from her lips, “What was that man thinking?”  Then she grabbed my hand and held it, and spoke of her daughter’s upcoming visit, her tempered dislike of her son-in-law, her worry for her children’s happiness.  I saw in her crystal eyes the deep truth: our children never leave us.  Ted chided her a bit, “She’s ready to leave, Maggie!  Stop talking!”  “I wish you were my daughter,” she said.  I sensed the connection, also.  I hugged her.  Outside, I tried to do some damage control with my oldest son.  “Honey, what Margaret said about your dad…”  “It’s okay, Mom,” he said, smiling, “She is so cool!  They are the coolest people!  I love her!  She’s just old, Mom.  She just doesn’t understand divorce.”  He grabbed his skateboard and headed off down the street, leaving me agape.

At Christmas we took sugar cookies and gingerbread men we’d made.  I meant to go back in January, but life got in the way.  In the back of my head, I knew Ted and Margaret would always be there.  I wanted to go talk to them more and record some of their stories.  Repositories of so much- several lifetimes between them, well past the usual lifespan, and mental faculties completely intact.

In early February, Chris took some pasta fagiole down.  It was a good day for soup, I had loads of extra.  I’d meant to take some meals before then, figuring meals were probably the most difficult thing for them.  Margaret told him to come back for the Tupperware container.  Rebecca went and got it a week later.  “I have to get down there,” I thought to myself.  I wanted to see them and visit.  I knew winter, when they couldn’t be outside sitting in the sun, must be lonely.

Two weeks ago there were a few cars in the drive.  I was rushing off to somewhere.  I saw a woman outside, in her fifties.  In a millisecond, I assessed her facial expression.  No tears.  Not upset-looking.  Of course, I thought something had happened.  Interestingly, my first thought was Ted.  What would Margaret do?  It’s the first thing you think.  But that woman’s face, her lack of sadness, no police cars or ambulance- well, they just had visitors, I supposed.

The next day my youngest daughter came down with chicken pox.  We were effectively quarantined for ten days.  Then, Friday night I took my oldest son to Blockbuster, and to get ice cream for our movie night.  When we drove down the street, I looked at Ted and Margaret’s house- 8pm, all the lights were out except the electric candles in the windows that she kept up year-round, as usual.  Wait.  Just a moment.  I stopped the car.  “What, Mom?”  I backed up.  I looked up into their bedroom window and there it was- the shock of white hair, the glasses on the strong face: Ted appeared to be sitting at a desk, writing in the candlelight.  They were never up at 8pm.  “Something happened.”

“Mom,” my son’s face darkened, “I just remembered.  Someone on the bus last week said that the lady who lived in that house died.  I didn’t believe them.  I forgot to tell you, though.”  I took a deep breath.  “Let’s go home and make a phone call,” I said.

My neighbor confirmed it- Margaret had departed this world, this body, the Sunday before.  “You were stuck home with chicken pox, and the funeral was Wednesday, I didn’t think to call you because I didn’t think you could get out,” she said.  Yes, yes.  Of course.   I want to ask the usual question, “What did she die of?” but it’s moot, right, at 93?  I walked back down the street as soon as I started the movie for my kids.  I looked up at Ted in the window.  I couldn’t knock now, it was too late, and he was in an alone space.  How must it be to go to bed without the person who’d been beside you for 70 years?  The most terrible divorce, a wretched amputation.  I wouldn’t even really know what to say.  I walked home, my hands in fists at my sides.

As an adult with ties, I’ve lost two grandmothers, two men who were like grandfathers, a cat, a gerbil (yes, there were ties to the gerbil).  I’ve been, in most other cases, a degree of separation from death.   Really, that is true in this case as well, but Margaret was a member of my tribe, and I don’t know how we knew it from our few conversations and visits, but we both knew it.  She was a firecracker, and I wish all the things you wish when it goes this way.  I find my mind on Ted, whom I’ve not yet gone to see, chicken that I am.  Afraid of what?  Saying the wrong thing?  Appearing on the doorstep at the wrong moment?  Is there a right thing to say?  Is there anything I can possibly say that will provide solace?  I think not.  Is there a wrong time to appear?  What time is not filled with some measure of grief for him?

But then I realize- 93 years.  At some point after about 85, you must realize it’s all, to quote Ray Carver, gravy.  Every day that you open your eyes, every day you make it down the stairs and put food in your mouth and maybe drive your truck or water your fresh, green grass.  Every bit of it just a dollop more icing on the cake.  And at 94 now, without his bride, why would Ted want to stick around?  Would I?  Wouldn’t I just be ready to go with my mate, to “slip the surly bonds of earth?”  Since I haven’t checked in, I don’t know what the writing is that Ted is doing after dark in the electric candlelight in the window.  I like to think he is writing some of their stories, and finding some joy in their three-quarter-century bond.  Peace.