Adventures of Zyggy the Wonder Zygote, First Installment

Initially, I wanted to begin a blog about BIRTH. Well, Birth, Death and the stuff in between. For what ever reason, my family and I have had a disproportionately large number of experiences with both ends of life. I've attended and assisted at a dozen births, though it is not my profession to do so. I'm neither a midwife nor a doula, but a bodyworker and friend to many women who asked me to attend them during this pivotal life experience. I love attending birth. I loved giving birth - the first time at home, and in a birth center the second time, when all the midwives in Los Angeles were being rounded up and jailed.

My husband and I are not hospice workers or medical personnel but we've been on hand for the last days and even the last breath of several folks. In one eighteen month period  we lost thirteen people who were close to us. We thought we'd inadvertently signed up for the "Death of the Month Club." It was a trying time. Our children were nine and twelve when the adventure began with the death of their paternal grandmother in 1989. We learned a lot. We cried a lot and at least felt familiar with the territory of grieving and supporting those who grieve.

Birth and death have a similar time table - meaning there IS no time table for either... each birth is unique; each death is unique.The practice of staying present to "WHAT is, WHILE it is the WAY it is" makes sense to me, but is challenging when our emotional stuff comes up. Returning to 'just this breath, just this moment' helps me. What helps you?

Since starting My Monday Muse on Blogspot, I've written pieces about my mom's illness, a family member's death, Ants! But nothing yet about birth. I notice myself squirming at the thought of committing my ideas to the wide world about birthing practices in the United States. I don't consider myself a radical, but acknowledge that some of my ideas are so far out of the mainstream of thought on the subject of birth as to be... well, radical.

I like to take the perspective of the person being born as IF s/he were a fully conscious, sentient and sensitive being. I wonder aloud here, for all who care to read, what the world might be like if we treated all emerging humans with the respect due them.

What follows is a fiction. It is a midnight musing from a few years ago. I share it with you: 1) to dip my toe in the water (not amniotic fluid) and, 2) to stay true to my initial intent which was to write about Birth... and the rest of it. I hope you get a laugh...

“Aaaaaaaaaaagh! Waaaaaaaiiiitt….nooooooooooooo! Not THIS couple; not THIS mom. Not THIS womb. I didn’t mean to choose this life!! Someone pushed me.Take me ba-a-a-a-a-a-a-ck pleeeeeeease!”

Faint sound akin to a squish as one reluctant soul enters the fertilized ovum. 

P.O.V.: INSIDE WOMB

“What are YOU doing here?” the sperm asks at the same time the soul and the egg are asking the same question. "For my part…  I was just so excited to get here! I had to fight off millions of other sperm, fight my way, elbow and nudge to be first and I MADE it! HA! Tetrus drivers have nothin’ on me!  You shoulda seen me swim the distance! Man oh man what a struggle. Then I get here and smoosh, smother, dissolve, Man… beware that zona pelucida… ain’t nothin’ lucid or peaceful about it. Got my cajones intact but barely. Stripped of my former identity as Manly Sperm down to the bare essentials of x-y-z. That’s z for zygote. By the way... I wonder what we’re growin’ here. An “x” or a “y”? Sure grows fast!”

A soft, curled feminine voice undulates in the velvet dark, sounding slightly echoey, 

“You think you had it rough, darling… let me tell you about the expulsion from the ovary and bonking down the tube. What a dizzying experience THAT was! Of course it doesn’t help that this mistress to whom I’m hand-maiden is pretty sloshed a good deal of the time. Makes it hard to know which way is up and how to choose a suitable mate. Looks as if you’ll do… at least until the baby is born, then all bets are off. You look like a possible 'donate and run' to me."

Both sperm and egg turn to the soul. 

“So, you?” 

“With all due respect… I didn’t mean to show up here at all! I’d give anything to get back home. I was playing around on the edge of baby heaven when someone pushed and here I am. What a predicament. I could see that your mistress,” turning to the egg voice, "really, really likes the sauce. Bummer. But then, I was a lush in my last incarnation so I guess it’s just desserts that I be born to one now. Let’s take a look around and see what’s what. Watch out there… cell division is a bumpy ride. I’m beginning to feel woozly… can’t quite remember what we were…zzzzzzz.”

At this time the newly installed soul undergoes radical amnesia – obliterating all memory of what came before and what its marching orders are for this lifetime. There’s only a thread of dread at the core of the forming zygote as it transforms from pollywog to fish to mammal to human mammal. As soon as it’s able it grabs hold of the umbilicus and tries to slow the flow of alcohol infused blood into itself.

Stay tuned for the next exciting installment of “Zyggy, the Wonder Zygote.”

...go marching two by two...

Ants

At eight, I fed them – tenderly breaking apart the inner workings of an orange and placing the teeny tiny juice sacs next to the ant path that ran from their nest at the base of our red-wood mail box post to somewhere near the gopher holes on the weed-covered slope heading down to the dirt road. I marveled that they could carry things bigger than they were, weighing more than they did. They also liked graham cracker crumbs. I delighted in watching them read each other’s antennae for clues to where the “good stuff” was to be found and watched them change course to pick up the snacks. I watched them a lot.

My mom’s housekeeper, Sue Jones, had gnarled feet, gnarled hands and pointy-poky elbows and knees. The first time I saw a Van Gogh painting of peasants I thought, “That’s Sue Jones!” Sue cared for our home for a few years during a formative period in my life. When she poured boiling water on ants gathered around the kitchen sink she always said, “May you come back as beautiful butterflies.” Perhaps Sue’s words were my first introduction to the idea of reincarnation.

Ants

At thirty, I was shocked by how many black rivers of them flowed through a friend’s kitchen - seemingly not a biggy to her - causing me to swoop up my eight month old daughter and not want to put her down on my friend’s custom moving-design-linoleum.

Ants

They send scouts. They’re smart and survival savvy. When we get Santa Ana wind conditions in Southern California the soil gets parched. Ants come marching two by two to see what’s available in the loo. I found two scouts at four one morning when I was brushing my teeth before retiring.  I took no joy in smushing their quick-footed bodies between my forefinger and the beige counter tile. It was more a reflex action. I was so tired from staying up so late. I uttered a small apology, Sue Jones’ wish and a warning: “Tell your nest mates NOT here!” Maybe I should’ve let one live to carry the message back– for when I arose at nine a.m. I found half a dozen scouts dashing about.

They leave no blood stains when crushed. They’re tidy as dead bugs go. I don’t think they are only self-serving. I count them as advance warning systems. 

Days before the 1994 Northridge Earthquake I observed ants trying to colonize our master bath AND the children's bathroom AND under the kitchen-sink. I think they had pre-cognition. I think they foresaw a disruption of their supply lines and were working overtime to establish new ones. After the quake my husband, two daughters and two dogs moved outside to sleep. In the ant’s usual territory, of the back yard, the aftershocks weren’t so shocking. We slept under the fourteen foot diameter trampoline while a couple of other families slept in tents next to the trampoline. Our friends’ homes were severely damaged in the quake; our damage was only cosmetic.The upside was that we had fewer nick-knacks to dust! 

The ant’s needs and our needs determined a changing of the guard. They went in while we went out! Ants are much more organized than people. But we had a hell of a lot of fun creating a make shift BBQ in a galvanized tub for cooking all the rapidly defrosting food. We made s’mores, told stories and sang songs by starlight during the beautiful darkness which descended when most of Los Angeles lost its power. I wonder if ants sing. I’m certain they would love s’mores!

Certainly also, they are a valuable commodity in the compost pile – helping to breakdown fruit and vegetable scraps –part of the process of turning garbage into life-giving soil. Whenever I’m going to harvest the compost to use in the garden, I give the ants twelve to twenty-four hours notice so they can temporarily relocate while I’m digging around in there. Amazingly, they seem to move to other locales!  For that I am grateful.

I wasn’t surprised when I read about Findhorn Garden and the inter-species communication that went on there, but I was surprised that I got similar results the first time I telepathically forewarned the ants about the impending compost upheaval.

One of my mom’s neighbors in Echo Park was inundated from time to time by rivers of ants – lots of dogs and dog-food attracted them. Joan had a sure-fire remedy. She’d buy half a dozen Winchell’s donuts and put the box on the front step and tell the ants “dinner is served… on the patio.” Within a few hours the ant-rivers all flowed out. Then Joan would move the box to a more opportune spot - away from her front step.

Like Joan, I do not like to use poison. My basic belief is that “there is no 'AWAY' to throw anything!” Whatever we make on this earth is here to stay in some form or other. Since matter can neither be created nor destroyed but can only change form, I’m concerned that we might turn all of earth’s material resource into poison or into plastic! (Is that redundant?) And while we’re thinking about this… let’s not dig up Uranium and other radioactive materials either, OK? There is no “away!” 

A friend recently told me about laying down a line of sugar mixed with baking soda. The sweetness attracts them and the ants carry the alkaline soda back to the nest which disrupts them somehow. Their little antennae exchange may go something like this: “Avoid the sweet white powder around that house! It’s bad news for us!” Sure beats the negative environmental costs of Black Flag and Raid!

Ants

Smart.

Organized.

Communicative.

Intentional.

Crafty.

Survivors.

Ants

I wonder if they can survive nuclear holocaust. Remember that 1954 horror movie… “THEM??!!”

Sometimes ants make me want to holler “Uncle!!”

One of the Wonders of Echo Park

Carin’ Karen lost her toe
How it happened I don’t know
Her mother pushed her on the track
Now she can’t get her toe back


I wonder what became of Karen Poe and how she really lost her toe.  While that mishap is history still shrouded in mystery, what was clear, to all who could hear, was how her mother yelled and screamed. We heard her shrill cry even when we dreamed.

An image frozen in my mind from 1956 right to the present time (may her life have turned from terror-filled to joyously sublime), is Karen at ten, two years older than I, run-walking away from her sickly yellow house through the weedy patch in want of tending while the screams from inside were never-ending. The look on her defiant young face said, “I’m free! You can’t catch me!”

All the while her mother, (drunk? I wonder now) was hollering out the window:

“Come back you good for nothing stupid girl!! Or I’ll cut off your other toe. Come back and finish-up the washing.”

Karen didn’t, but ran… risking another squashing.

I had run from my own home across the Macadam hoping to meet no Bogey or bad man, down the path by the Fox house, past pepper tree and dog’s house. On my way to see Jeffrey, my dear. We'd  married at seven - the previous year! Fleet my feet beat over ivy terraces to the street which was really “The Alley” where we kids would rally. The last thing I wanted was to see Karen so haunted.

Alone on the school yard her shell was just too hard… a tough nut to crack… ghostly toe on the track. Her mom yelled. Her house smelled. Her dead dad her heart held.

We thought we had the Cinderella story being acted out right there off the alley, right down the hill from Denise and Sally, with Karen doing all the chores – laundry sprouted like mushroom spores, while the wicked mother, malcontent treated Karen with devilish and selfish intent.

I wonder how it was to be Karen Poe and to want for fathering; to want for mothering, sister and brother-ing. “Want” was one of her middle names. At Elysian Heights Elementary I never saw her join in  games.

What can have happened to Karen’s mother, do you think - to beat down her poor daughter? Was it the drink?

None of us kids was ever quite sure how Karen’s great toe parted company with her foot.

The story went something like this:  Karen’s mom took the sweet little three-year-old Miss down to Sunset Boulevard in Echo Park, the main drag. Karen was not yet quite so broken as she ended up at the hands of the old hag. Curious at three, she ran from her mama’s vice-like grip, to see what she wanted to see. She didn’t trip… just a step or two, but she lost her shoe, scaring that mama into a rage so great, inside of it she couldn’t see straight. So Mrs. Poe pushed. The crowd on the street hushed.  Karen's foot was on the track. Karen's mother then stood back. The street car couldn’t swerve so it promptly cut off Karen’s big toe. It just never looked right after that -except as a testament to her woe.

Maybe that’s why kids shunned her and kept her at bay. Her wound was visible; ours tucked away.  Our hurts were invisible it made us indivisible. United, the gang was afraid of the Poe’s, repulsed by the sight of Karen’s missing big toe.

Carin’ Karen lost her toe
How it happened I don’t know
Her mother pushed her on the track
Now she can’t get her toe back

A lonely set of four at the end of a lonely foot bearing weight and bearing witness to this lonely only child trapped by hate in a rough patch… in need of tending and sorely in need of mending.

I only know whenever I crossed that bit of Sunset Boulevard where the old Red Cars ran I never stepped on the tracks. Forgetting Karen was too hard. Forget her? I never can. Even after they removed the Red Car Line and all the steel tracks, so shiny and fine it made my teeth chatter, caused my hands to make fists, when crossing from North to South across Sunset bound west.  It made my own toes curl to think of Karen’s great one sheared off so. I wonder what happened to Karen’s big toe.

Face Book yields lots of Karen Poes… how am I to know IF she survived her childhood, IF she rose high from being so low? Could she be well? Escaped from that hell?  Enough to link in with a social network?
If she ever had kids, did SHE go berserk?

I hope, I hope, I hope she made it.  Karmic debt? She's more than paid it.

Through Company Eyes

I don’t know whether to feel virtuous because we’re so busy or embarrassed because we let a good resource lie fallow. Diving into the pool in the back yard would be lovely… if we had time, yet it feels like a guilt-inducing indulgence. We swim so rarely, the pool would be better turned into a garden.  Ah, but when company comes, it is really cool to jump in the pool.

Today, when I was preparing to receive company who might make use of the deliciously cool retreat on such a hot July day, I got down and cleaned around the edges – a task which the pool man skips week after week. You can’t really see, as you stand outside of the pool, what the spiders are up to just under the rim of the slate deck that overhangs the tile edging all around. Smart bugs have found the best encampment! Mosquitoes and unsuspecting bees dip in for a wee sip and many of them become ensnared by the mesh of fine webbing just above the water line. LOTS of spider lunches are caught and are waiting to be devoured.

On all fours, I went around the entire perimeter of the pool deck and my rag found panicked spiders scurrying away, dead bees wrapped in so many strands of gossamer filament that they looked more like lavender blossoms than insects – legs and angular body parts softened by layers and layers of spun silk. How do spiders DO that? 

I worry about black widows. Once, a few years ago, when I actually went IN the pool I found one in the filter basket area – just under the warmed-by-the-sun- slate over-hang, but again, above the water line. Maybe if we jumped IN more often the spiders would be discouraged by the splashing. I wouldn’t want any of our two-legged friends to encounter any eight-legged friends while trying to relax in our pool, so I put on my “company eyes” and checked it out.

Seeing things from another’s perspective is a skill worth honing. It certainly was pro-survival for me to hone it. My dad used to have me hold a flash light while he tinkered with his car in the driveway at night. Invariably my six-year old arms would tire and my six-year old mind would wander and the steady stream of light would likewise wander from the part dad needed illuminated in order to fix it. He would yell and grab my hand to steady the beam. That was the beginning of a beautiful marriage between me and inanimate-object-relations awareness.  

I became hyper-conscious of how objects relate to one another in the world and I can track site-lines between people and objects or people and other people and do my best to make sure that nothing I do impedes a person’s view of an object or of a person she is trying to look at. I know when I’m between two folks who can’t see one another because my head is in the way. I move to accommodate their easier viewing of one another. 

Before a visit from our granddaughter, I preview the house at her level, crawling around on all fours to see what this brilliant two year old will see as she cruises through our home. Accordingly, I pick up the lint and dead flies from the corners and make sure all the safety plugs are in the electrical sockets. 

When I’m teaching, if I write anything on a chalk board or white board, I move out of the way to make sure my audience can see what I’ve written. I’m also overly self-conscious about how my back side appears… whether the back of my hair is presentable or if I have a wedgie - things you might not think about if you only look at your front side in the mirror. Growing up in my family it paid to CMA. (Cover My Derriere.)

In preparing our pool area for company this weekend and next it was important for me to “see the house and garden through company eyes.” I remember my mom cleaning house when company was coming. Maybe it got cleaned at other times too, but blitzing the house to gather up and stow away the accumulated crap on every flat surface before company was coming – sometimes just minutes before they were due to arrive - was the norm.

Putting on Company Eyes is a good thing. I get to really look at what I’ve let slide. Piles of books that want reading, sewing projects hanging on the back of the chair by the sewing machine in hopes the elves will show-up to complete the task, the “IN BOX” on my desk with papers dating from before we moved into this house over 20 years ago… all this stuff can GO, ‘Bye-‘ Bye, Good Riddance!

Is July too late for “Spring Cleaning?” I admire folks who can just dump it all. I admire folks who don’t seem to have the “stuff magnet” surgically implanted in their being the way I do. I admire one of my yoga teachers who claims to have emptied her entire storage unit into the back of a truck, to have driven to the dump and (gulp) to have just backed up to the edge of the abyss and shoved the entire collection of unopened boxes. She said she felt much lighter for the experience. My mind goes, “But but but but… what if those were photographs of your children or your grandparents? What if those boxes had precious artifacts from your earlier life? I never admitted to her how shocking I found her cleansing because I thought surely I would be judged for embodying “attachment” rather than “non-attachment.” 

Ultimately, I guess my greatest fear is of being judged, found lacking and whopped up-side the head because of my shortcomings. Maybe I could learn to be accepted for who I really am… you know… let my inner slob come forward. I’ll work on that one. Meanwhile I aspire to down-size, un-load and get-ready to have fun in the sun. 

Still, I worry about the black-widows, so I’ll keep my company eyes for those times when they’re useful. Maybe I’ll even jump in the pool and treat myself like “company” just because I want to swim! You know… use stuff rather than letting the stuff use me!

Looking Up

July 4, 1962

I’m 13 and my friend Julie and I are in a row-boat with my mom and step dad in the middle of Echo Park Lake. Before the word “tween” is coined, we are just awkward. Not yet adult, but certainly not kids and we do not want to be seen with parents, but walk 14 steps behind them as if to say to the world, “Parents? Nope. I’m a free agent. I’ve never seen those old people in my life!” 

Leo has only been my step dad since last September – not even a year. I can’t stand how he puts his arm around my mom’s waist right in front of me. Julie is by my side in total empathy. Imagine our embarrassment at having to sit with both of them with our knees only inches from their back sides. Thank heaven the sun has gone down.

I keep staring into the water hoping some giant squid will fancy us for dinner, take us in his tentacles and pull us under the black surface of this kiddy pond and out of sight… just in case any of my Jr. High School friends should happen to catch me with my parents. Ugh. So embarrassing.

To his credit, Papa Leo has pulled off an amazing feat getting us tickets to be right UNDER the fireworks as they are shot off from the north side of the park directly over the lake. But he’ll never replace my Dad the L.A. Times Staff Photographer, my Dad the artist, my Dad the author. My real Dad. I miss my Dad. 

Mom keeps making small talk asking Julie, who moved from her rightful home in Echo Park several years ago over to the Miracle Mile area off Wilshire Boulevard, “So, how is Bancroft Jr. High, Julie, and where is your brother Mark going to High School?”

“Fine. Fairfax.”

Dutifully answered. Kindly even. Julie has no problem just loving my mother. My mom and Julie’s house-keeper Hattie spend more time mothering Julie than does her own mom who is very busy with lunch dates, art classes and work, but not with her kids. That’s Hattie’s job. Ethel’s house is run with military precision, smells faintly of mothballs, linseed oil and lemon Pledge. Ethel, like my father used to, paints in oils. I like going to Julie’s house. I like how it smells and that they always eat at the same time every day. The only difficult day is Saturday. Well, SaturDAY is OK, it’s Saturday night that’s the problem. That’s when Julie’s dad hollers. He makes sure to get his hollering done for the entire week on Saturday nights, I think, because he works many nights and doesn’t want to lose-out on getting out all the anger that’s inside him. I’m OK with her dad’s hollering and her brother Mark’s teasing because sometimes Julie gives me hand-me-ups of clothes she doesn’t want any more. She has a lot of clothes. And because the food is wonderful at Julie’s house.

 Sunday brunch is my favorite. Ethel’s mom and dad, “Bubba” and “Zaida” come over. Bubba has neat braids pinned over her crown like a built-in head-band. Zaida has amazing bulging eyes that look as if they’ll pop right out of their sockets if he coughs or laughs too hard. He’s fond of pinching our noses and showing us how he’s caught them. We learned ages ago that it’s his thumb, but he keeps doing it. 

On Sundays Hattie toasts poppy-seed and onion bagels. There’s plenty of smooth, creamy cream cheese, white fish, lox and herring – usually without a single bone – all arranged just-so on a big white platter. Julie’s dad often sleeps-in and comes to the breakfast table in his robe. Sometimes on Sundays when I stay-over they take me to the beach with them. Mike (Julie’s dad) goes fishing from the sand - just back of the water-line. Julie and I build sand castles and keep the sand crabs in a bucket.

I remember one Fourth of July when I was at the beach with Julie’s family and we saw fireworks all up and down the coast. It was so beautiful. The sight of it stayed with me a long, long time.

This Fourth of July Julie and I are together again, in this silly boat with lots and lots of other boats around us. In fact, the clump of boats is almost as thick as the clump of mosquitoes swarming around us. Some boys are holding onto the sides of theirs and rocking and rocking, trying to tip-over or just splash themselves - I’m not sure which. Boys are always so show-offy. Their dad just sits there and rocks with the boat. I practice looking totally bored because I think that’s what girls are supposed to do, but what the boys are doing looks like fun. And besides, rocking ‘til we flip over seems like a better option than waiting around for a giant squid. I model for Julie holding on and begin to rock my torso side to side. We’re both rocking. Her arm is crossed over mine and we can just barely grasp both edges of the dinghy.

My folks, on the seat in front of us, look back. 

“Hey quit rockin’ the boat!” 

Mom has only recently stopped being sick to her stomach most mornings. She says I’m going to be a big sister in December. Maybe she doesn’t want to be reminded of that sick feeling. We stop rocking.

I wish the fireworks would start already and we could get this over with. 

Finally! Some hubbub on the shore. A fizzly sound, a pop and, “Whoa!” The bombs bursting in air… gave proof through the night that at least the flag on the boathouse was still there. This is more like it. Everyone yells, “Ooooh! Aaaaaaah!” This is cool! I watch the sky, then the water reflecting the colors all wibble-wobbly. I love how the sound comes after the fact of the exploding light. Someone explained to me all about sound waves traveling slower than light waves. Still, I think the sound has to hold its own ears because it’s so loud and it is that pause for ear-holding that makes the sound late for its own party. 

This is quite a party. Plenty of red, white and blue… but I like the green and gold dandelion bursts best of all… from the center out-ward then some dandelion fluff within the bigger dandelion bursts to keep the explosion going even longer. All the while the sparkles are spraying down.

Something you might not think about while you’re watching fireworks is that they come boxed in paper or cardboard and that when they’re shot into the air, sometimes the packaging is still around the business part of the display… and it can catch fire... and it always comes back down.

So, here we are on the lake in this boat, surrounded by waaay lot of other boats, watching the show and all of a sudden a flaming piece of cardboard is falling out of the sky right toward our boat. Papa Leo stands up and starts flapping his arms toward the flaming bit of cardboard. The boat is rocking and mom and Julie and I scream and grip the sides. Mom uses one hand to hold Leo’s pant waist. By the light of the fireworks I can see his face is set. He’s not going to let that flaming box land in our boat. He swats it away and it falls, Ssssssppppffftt, into the water. People in the boats around us clap and shout “Bravo! Leo makes a little bow and sits down again next to mom. She puts her arm around his waist. I want to throw up. Where’s a squid when you need one?

Happy Sane Celebratory Fourth to you! And please rock the boat as much as you want.