to become

becoming a mother has been, for me, an intense metamorphosis of being. i am certain i am not alone in this. but perhaps unlike others, i had never before given real thought to the idea of creating life, raising a small human, and loving so wholly until my uterus demanded it should be so.

i have become a mother, and m is truly my purpose. she is my pearl, and my love. i pour into her all that i feel, all that i know. i give her all i can summon to please and comfort and nurture and adore her, and, in so doing, i have little left at all! for all that, it is a conundrum to me that i am now discovering valuable pieces of myself because i have given so much away to m - the loss has revealed parts i always feared i'd miss, and revealed that in their loss there is much i've gained instead.

to become a mother, i have given up many faces, desires, wants, and illusions i once had for myself and my ego - these have been replaced with the consuming love i have for m. to become a mother, my already stark feelings of wrong and right have sharpened, because to help create the world in which i wish my daughter to live, fools cannot be suffered.

i'm now unbearably aware that with only a small slip, the space between all people can be as easily filled by the marks and matters of personal grievances, personal pain, personality, personal perception - care or crassness, vanity or compassion, disrespect or adoration.

it is perhaps more common, more mundane, though, that this space is filled only with increasing silence: it is true that the less we say to others, the less we find to say. sometimes the silence roars and roars - and there is still nothing, beyond the sound of it, to say. but there is no honesty in this silence. and without honesty, there can be no self. and without self, there can be no selfless love.

or we drift away and drown far apart in misunderstanding, indifference - indifferent to self, to love, to thought, to passion, to honesty, to conviction, to mystery, to beauty, to rage, to desolation, to the silence itself - this is the saddest fate, and one i don't wish for anyone. so i share with m and give to her everything and all that i can give her from myself. i know now who i am, because of her.

my head ...

... holds a million thoughts i don't have time to free.

pictures of memories

my mom famously said once how, if we didn't make pictures of an event or moment, then all we would have are our memories - and i quote, "...that will die with us!" now, my mom is known around these parts for a certain unmitigated hyperbole concerning most things. i learned some of this from her, i admit it. but i thought this declaration about memories was just too over the top and too morbid, even for her. i laughed and laughed about it. then rolled my eyes. then laughed again. i've been laughing for years about it.

then i found myself at a stoplight the other day, in hot july, watching a young blond man, dressed all in black, walking determinedly down the street - a very like image of my current husband, as he looked 20 years ago now, walking down this very street, during the hot summer when we first dated. such a flood of melancholy caught me, as i leaned forward and squinted my eyes, trying to erase the details of the current scene so i could visually, concretely re-experience the memory and long-lost image of a boy i so madly loved walking down a city street in mid-summer. it was as though my memory had been made separate and real for just a moment - real enough again to see it not only in my mind's eye, where i often revisit it, but in flesh and blood, the real pavement releasing real heat, a real person - alike enough for the vision - enacting a real scene from a memory that only i can see in just its way within my mind.

suddenly, at that stoplight, watching this, i knew exactly what my mother meant. what a sadness, to not be able to show my husband this beautiful image i save of him in my mind and heart. my memories can only be mine alone ... and yes, what loss to have these die with us.

it was sobering and made me feel a sense of longing for others' beautiful and horrible and awesome and individual perceptions and images and visions i will never see or know because of the nature of the human mind and memory. closed, internal, separate. it made me feel very much alone to think of it this way in that moment. i want to keep these images. share them. gift them to their subjects or my child. a way to transcribe thoughts and brain waves - the electrical patterns of memory - into actual media we might share and understand. not art - not writing, not picture-making - but true transcriptions of memory, an exact recording of our thoughts' form. it's the stuff of science fiction, i suppose, wishing for these pictures of memories.

sky blue

i realized the other day that i spend a lot of time looking down.
when i walk, i look down.
walking the dog and M the other day,
on one of the most pleasant
summer days of memory,
i caught myself scanning the sidewalks,
looking for pebbles and stones,
examining trash left on the periphery of green yards,
tracing the asphalt repairs - thick black lines of tar -
with eyes that were looking down, down, down.

well, wouldn't that affect a girl?

so i tried looking up! i held my head up.
like mountain pose - strong! up! soft gaze up.
pushing that stroller, wrangling that dog.

i looked UP! i saw such a sky blue,
such meandering, simple clouds, moving.
i saw the tops of trees swaying. i saw green and blue,
my favorite colors.

it was very pretty. and it made me feel
confident - full of hope and happiness.

well, doesn't that affect a girl?!!

the long day

sunday was a day like those of your childhood, when the hours stretch out and out and out, a mysterious gift of space/time on a summer weekend. i'd prepared and eaten a huge breakfast, read a magazine before the baby woke up, finished the dishes, started some laundry, got the baby up, changed, and nursed, took a very long walk, weeded a bit in the garden, grazed for snacks, nursed again and put the baby down for a nap, and then realized it was only 1 o' clock! i haven't had a day like that since i was 10, but the memory and realization of it came back at once in a rush. such a nostalgic, unexpected joy!

the weather, too, was incredible for mid-July. clear, cloudless sky, crisp blue, with a breeze that rustled leaves and flowers, bringing the scent of my chocolate and orange mint into the screened porch. it couldn't have been 75 degrees when i got up, so i opened all the windows. after the thick blanket of days we'd had last week, saturday's rains really cleared the air.

cleared my mind, too, it turns out. and i needed it, because, without revealing identities or addresses, the party we attended saturday night at a most palatial (to me) home set high upon a hill in a very swanky ... um, village of the wealthy ... well, let's just say, when i discovered they were younger than us AND their half-bath was literally the size of our dining 'area,' i was brought to tears. not to mention the seething envy that seized me when i set eyes upon their walk-in kitchen pantry, with more storage and space than any one of our actual closets. i'm truly not usually one to envy the wealthy or desire Things that money can bring. but for some reason, in light of current financial ... um, uncertainties ... in our lives, this was too much. i felt so numb when we left the party.

but sunday's clear, long day, a pep talk from husband T, and a wonderful evening with friends Z and L did help. i found some gratitude for what we do have, gained a bit of perspective, and by the time i went to sleep last night, i was feeling sorry for the wealthy of the world ... always having to consume and dress well and throw parties with excessive coordinated themed decor. i can't imagine the pressure.

more than this

look! i already didn't make a post on the very second day. my first post was a tall tale! sometimes the desire for solitude, even away from my own thoughts and experiences is significantly more important than making time to write. in fact, i am finding that is often true these days.

but i can't ignore myself, try as i might.

frankly, i am overwhelmed with my big ideas. i have plans for the house, plans for creative projects, plans for the garden, plans for a budget system, plans for selling things on CL, eBay, DS, or a yard sale, plans for this blog and others. then there are the recipes i want to try. the clothes i need to repair or alter. the letters i haven't written. the emails i haven't followed up. the lunches i haven't had, with friends i rarely see. the phone calls i don't answer. the forms i don't complete. the appointments i don't schedule.

i am overwhelmed. this is the battle i fight every day. one of the most difficult realities of being the mother of an 11-month-old is that my windows for self and purpose are so few, so brief, and often so unpredictable. i was so accustomed to my leisure, pre-M. accustomed to the languid pursuit of absolutely anything that struck me in any given moment. now, to have come to this place, where my lack of (indeed, my distaste for) intentional organization of time and activity ultimately undermine anything i want to begin or to try ... well, it's become more than i can bear, most days.

i've done it

it's committed. i'm committing blog!
i'll write every day, and i won't leave out a day.
and i'll tell you everything, certainly.

i will write big words and small.
i will tell tall tales and make insignificant
any bad realities in my days. really, i will.

i've already begun. this is the first one.
i will be purposeful and true,
getting it out. putting it here.

you can come read it
whenever you want.