I don't know if it's time to say goodbye
to you, little bird of a woman.
I hold your bony hands and stroke
back the fine white hair above your brow
while you doze in and out of sleep
and wakefulness.
Who are those four men? You ask me.
And I turn around to stare at the
golden rectangle of the doorway leading
into the kitchen, as if I half expect
to see those men standing there,
leaning against the wall,
their arms folded and waiting.
The borders between dreams and
the solid world are blurred and fuzzy lately
like the soft, white film that has started
to circle your light brown irises.
And I wonder for a moment if the borders
have blurred between this world
and another,
the one I've forgotten how to believe in.
These are a few of my favorite things:
- a warm blanket on cold toes
- sun shining through leaves
- the first ticklings of a new idea
- singing really loudly in the car with my favorite people
- a brand new bar of soap
- felt tipped pens
- the first bite of a warm cookie
- the sound of birds through an open window
- crystal blue skies
- new leaves
- the shuffle of my kids feet past my door in the morning
- my puppy's grin as he runs
- warm grass and puffy white clouds
- a page filled with cursive
- giant maple trees
- a new tube of paint
- freshly vacuumed carpet
- sidewalk cafes
- a hot bath after a good meal
- Italian cream sodas
- waking up after a deep sleep
- driving past lit houses at night
- patios decked with twinkling white lights
- a window streaked with rain
- the sound of geese flying overhead
- crushed ice
- a tight hug from my kids
- listening to my girls singing in the shower
- the tidy look of a pastry case
- the remnant of paint on old brick walls
The world is full of my favorite things. I could never list them all.
Right now it's enough to wake to the buttery dawn knowing that all three bodies are still warm underneath their covers.
It's enough to listen to your breath, slow and deep and steady beside me, while my leg drifts to the cool corner of the bed and I imagine the day set before us like something cream filled and chocolate coated, a confection served on a silver plate.
It's enough to know that outside our window the chartreuse leaves of the aspen tree, as small as coins, are moving softly in the breeze, drinking up the new rays of a spring morning.
It's enough.
I've loved a lot of the art dolls that I've made, but this one is by far my favorite. Not only did I love her for purely aesthetic reasons, but she was a piece of artwork that I could relate to metaphorically. Without realizing it, I might have sculpted my own self portrait.
I love the idea of drawers, compartments, cubby holes. There are so many tiny places that we store things inside of ourselves, so many different dreams that we compartmentalize. I'm sure if someone opened me up, this is what they'd see, hundreds of tiny drawers filling me up. Some would be crammed full, while others would have only one special trinket resting inside them. Some would be as messy as the junk drawer beside the stove in my kitchen and some would be immaculate.
What do the drawers inside you hold?
We've already established that I was a girl in love with animals, so it won't surprise you that in the early 80s when my dad took me to the lab at the University of Utah to visit the baby cows that his artificial hearts were first implanted in, I was ecstatic.
In my memory the place is zoo-like and friendly. I overlooked the urine and manure on the floor, the loud hissing and clicking of the machines. I only remember the calves, with their wobbly legs and knobby knees, their large square heads jutting out between the bars of their cages and the dark globes of their eyes.
There’s a picture of me holding a handful of hay out to one of them. I’m not very old in the photograph, maybe four or five and I stand a few feet from the brown and white calf, clutching the hay with two tiny hands, hoping with all my might that my dad will let me take it home to keep.
I didn’t understand that this calf wouldn’t live much longer, that his life was expendable. After proving that he could survive, he simply wouldn’t be needed any longer. “Sacrifice” was the word my dad used, describing it. It wasn't until much later I started to wonder if I had been expendable too. What need had I filled in him that simply wasn't required anymore?
When I was in Junior High I went through a period of being more than a little obsessed with beauty. I was a "cute" girl, with freckles and a slight build, but I dreamed of being a beauty. I spent hours leafing through Seventeen magazine, dreaming about what it would be like to be one of "those" girls. I'd pick out my favorites and send vibes out into the universe begging the Grand Power of Being (or some cosmic deity) to see fit to bestow a bit of that beauty on me.
For years I thought that I'd grow into that beauty. Maybe when I was fifteen...sixteen...seventeen, I hoped. But of course I stayed the same girl that I'd always been, just a little older, a little taller.
I can't remember how old I was when the longing for beauty finally wore off. It wasn't a grand revelation, not an epiphany that struck in the middle of the night, but more a gradual reimagining. New desires took over. The hope that I'd one day grow up to be a beauty was replaced by the longing to be a good mother and writer and artist. It feels good to look for beauty in other places, in art, in family. And there's plenty of it there to be found.
I know this month is going to be crazy with Script Frenzy, but I couldn't pass up the A to Z Challenge.
A is for Animals:
Yep, that's right. If you know me, you know that I could collect animals the way some people collect shoes. It's a problem passion that I've had since I was a little girl and saw my first horse at the circus.
I used to dream that I'd find a horse on the side of the road (I guess like a stray dog) and that I'd be allowed to take it home and keep it. I imagined how I would ride my horse to school each morning, tying him up outside near the bike rack. Yes, watching Little House on the Prairie led me to believe that little girls could ride a horse to school.
I had books full of horses that I'd look through religiously, imaging which one would some day be mine. Normally I was drawn to the black stallions with flowing manes and large, muscular bodies.
Maybe this dream stemmed from my love of the movie, The Black Stallion (sugar cubes would ever after remind me of Black's velvety lips). As a little girl I got to sit on the back of the real Black Stallion. My dad met the owner of one of the horses used in the movie and arranged for me to get to ride him during a trip to Texas. For the longest time we had a picture of me straddling his broad back with my arms spread wide.
As I grew up I never stopped loving animals. I don't have room in my yard for a horse, but I do have three dogs and a bunny rabbit. My dreams have shifted slightly. I still want my black stallion, but now I want the farm to go along with him. I can see him there, grazing in the green fields. I'll come outside in the morning when the dew still covers the grass and I'll place a sugar cube on top of the fence, waiting for his velvety lips to snatch it up.
