Hide

Thin skin. The skin I’m in. 

Thinning more each day.

Shin skin. Chin skin.

Shedding along the way.

What’s the skin, but boundary? 

What’s you is outside my hide; 

What’s inside my hide is me. 

What becomes of hide if you slide?

Thin shin & chin skin. Slide into home; tear-up my hide.

What a metaphor my sore knees were for sliding into home. 

Nearly everyday, on my way from the Fox’s house to home, 

I’d slide in all alone... 

Scrape my knees

On gravel in between 

Our houses on top of the hill. 

You could hear me scream so shrill. 

Needing comfort, needing knees to be tended to. 

See me! See how coming home hurt, won’t you?!

My Conception Journey ended with a bumpy landing. 

WAIT! 

Wrong womb! 

W-A-A-A-I-T!! I was pushed! 

W-A-A-A-A-A-I-I-I-TTTT! NO FAIR!!!

I didn’t mean to DROP in H-E-E-E-E-R-E!!!

Take me baaaaack to baby heaven.

Let me choose the folks for me!

NO! NOT this place, please!

These are not my people!

Mercifully, mom could sing - even though her sight was blocked.

Mercifully, mom could rock - ‘though she knew not that daddy’s cock 

was going where it shouldn’t ought.

Let me hide my hide so he won’t whup it.

Let my hide be spared his rod.

Let me hide my hide so he won’t see it.

Let my hide be spared, by God!

I couldn’t believe in God on high

When daddy s-l-i-m-e-d me - mouth to thigh

Daren’t ask Jesus’ help to fly...

He’d asked so nice and was left to die!

Hiding hide became my practice

Closet safety my specialty

Hide my hide in trees and grasses

Great outdoors my sanity

Daddy drinks and daddy stinks

Just the same as Don

Fox... and Jacky’s daddy John

All daddies drink and stink, me thinks

All the daddies and their wives 

Are running for their lives

Just after war, lest we forget

Water forgets not it’s wet

Big brother is a bother

Acting much the same as father

Drank at ten when I was four

Drank from then and ever more

Who will save this freckled hide?

Who will mend this mangled pride

Who, indeed, can make it better?

Grammy, maybe. Wrapped in her sweater

I’m protected and calm

Her love, her prayer - a healing balm

At her house, I can be seen

And daddy here is rarely mean

Grammy sees me, so does Nora

Kay Harris, too, shore ‘n’ begorrah

It takes so little to help a kid

Just see her and she stops the skid

From light to total dark

She turns, rebounds with every quark

Going lightward full speed ahead

Going upward, shedding dread

Soon there’ll be no need to hide

With daddy on the other side

I’ll write and sing without any fears

Wet cheeks’ reward are joyful tears

So, Memorial Day plays double duty

Commending Dad and Bro 

Who fought for country, love and beauty

Not so very long ago

I remember, too, the girl whose hide has healed

Whose sentence was repealed

The one whose gratitude is infinite

For Grammy’s love like granite

The rock on which I could depend

Foundation of love unconditional

I suppose it’s simply traditional

That Gran’mother’s love never ends.

Heidi Hi, Heidi Ho.

Heal the hide and away we go!

Grand Night for Flying...

A fish flops into the bay as if thrown. No one is around. Then, another flops, and another and another. My heart beats faster. It’s my very first real sighting of flying fish!

Mission Bay, San Diego, California, USA, May 17, 2013.

They’re REAL, not just some fictional CGI critters as in Life of Pi, and not just “fish out of water”, but rather creatures at the effect of some strong life force impelling them upward.

The correlations I make between fish leaping in - what... joy? biological imperative? - and the healing and returning resilience I’m privileged to witness in people at this Advanced Training in Somatic Experiencing, as each participant sheds limiting beliefs and constrictions in the nervous system, seem credible to me. The same upward rising impulse is present in each. There’s just no knowing how that thrust of life longing for itself will manifest.

It’s grand to be gob-smacked with delight at this wacky universe, and I am!

Closing Circles, Opening Hearts

We three volunteer counselors move slowly under the weight of the sun, marveling at songs of the red-winged black birds by the pond. We’ve just finished cleaning up the spiffy new arts & crafts area and we’re heading toward camp’s outdoor theatre where the all camp photo will be taken. I have three paper-bag puppets - two people puppets and one pig puppet - under my arm, their yarn hair and curly tail blowing in the hot wind. They’re props for the Camp Fire offering tonight in which six or more kids and I will sing.

Dragonflies swoop at the edges of the water. As we round the corner I see a dad stretched out on one of the log benches sound asleep. My heart wells up with empathy. It’s one thing to have a child whose life is threatened by cancer. It’s an extra burden when moms and dads don’t speak the language of the medical staff, and long hours worked won’t cover the costs incurred during the fight for health.

Padres Contra el Cancer steps in to help such families. Campamento Familiar Mother’s Day Weekend sessions at Camp Ronald McDonald for Good Times are often attended by some of Padre’s staff. We are at benefit this weekend of three of the organization’s staff members: Rosie, Valeria - herself a former camper - and Cesar, a doctoral candidate in counseling who is at camp for the first time.

“Ya es tiempo para el almuerzo. It’s lunch time already!” I say as we walk by the tired papa. He rouses and we let him know, as he stretches sleepily, that we’re gathering first at the theatre just beyond the dining hall for the photo. He and I exchange pleasantries, he in perfect Spanish and some English; I in halting Spanish. We get to the theater.

The last stragglers wander in after us. Shutters click. Cheers and smiles abound. Nearly every mom, pop, child and counselor is wearing a new white tee shirt with the camp’s iconic rainbow logo with three paper-doll-cut-out-style kids linking arms. To me the logo symbolizes the unity we feel at camp - all colors, all sizes, all ages and abilities. As my husband often says at the sometimes tearful camp closings, “Somos una familia.” We are one family.

Saturday night is here! Twilight spotlights the magic of camp... moms, dads and kids on the basketball and volleyball courts, in the sandbox, on the porch, playing catch, watching vapor trails turn pink, orange and finally purple as the sun pours gold over the mountains ringing Camp Ronald McDonald for Good Times. 

Inside the dining hall, so many songs, poems, and skits are offered, and, yes, the puppet show version of “The Wheels on the Bus” - wherein the pig on the bus says, “I’m in the wrong song, I’m in the wrong song!” (It was a toss up whether we’d sing “Old MacDonald Had a Farm” or “Wheels on the Bus.” “Wheels” won.)

Sunday’s closing is a three Kleenex event for me. One dad, not our sleeping hero - but another heroic one, confesses that he was coming only to bring the wife and kids and that he did not expect to really “BE” at camp. Early into Friday night’s activities, he realized what it was all about and he dove in - full throttle - to PLAY FULLY, spend quality time with his children, let his hair down at the parent meeting, and to enjoy the natural beauty which abounds in these mountains above Palm Springs. During his impromptu sharing at the closing circle, this dad speaks twice from his heart about the gratitude he and his entire family feel for this campamento, los voluntarios, the staff, the food and the wisdom shared by other families on a similar path.

Anyone who steps into the center of this circle is surrounded by love. Four year old N  whispers to Cesar, who is MC for the closing, so he can say her words out loud: “Feliz Dia de Las Madres.” The circle erupts in cheers and applause.  Little N beams. 

DD, a volunteer barely older than the oldest camper thanks the parents for loaning to us their most precious possessions - their kids - if only for the weekend. He goes on to acknowledge that we volunteers come because we adore witnessing the incredible magic that happens when kids feel normal instead of “odd-one-out” as so many of them do at school. Patient B, her parents, grandma and her younger sister and brother are my family to support during the three days. Eight year old B confides in me that kids at school bullied her. One boy pushed her down so he could see her wig fall off during her “chemo-cut” days. At camp, not only are we “una familia,” but NO one is odd one out.

Mi esposo, mi amor, thanks the adolecentes for creating the carnival Saturday afternoon. I say, in my halting Spanish, that it is because you love your children that they become our teachers here at camp. We learn from them how to love with an open heart, to play as if there’s no tomorrow and to try new things - even if it’s a little scary.

With open hearts, we close our circle and return home. All the familia is enriched.

Essence of Healing

underlying crass appliques

resilient pre-wound child

shining, rising, ever bubbling

is anything but mild

trapped, imobile and thwarted by

varied vagueries life throws down

resilient child complies, survives

holding tight from toes to crown

shining essence never lost

but taken underground

safety found in hiding out

invisible, no peep, nor sound

until the day when life provides

support enough to heal

witnesses who see our light

confirm all that we feel

resilience reigns our inner realm

and comes up when we yield

remove defenses and ego fences 

out-standing in our field

of consciousness pure, expansive

the entire universe dwells within us

we are one - in a UNI-verse

which sang us all just because

creativity is the force of

generation infinite

bubbling, fecund - life itself

eternally this minute

wounded child contracts and hides

as the spirit expands  

energy reaches past all bounds 

as sea touches all earth’s sands  

healing child is gaining strength

to do the thing s/he must

leaving footprints on our hearts

welcomed as rain on dust

each spirit child has his day

to be remembered whole

we name names, forget them not

alive those poor lost souls

battered, beaten, burnt and buried

in single and mass graves

we only bury bodies here

‘cause spirits won’t behave

they leak and shine and run around

they turn and turn again

‘til dizzy in our head we feel 

they’re too big to be contained

bullies badger; that’s their job

we want to tell them ‘stop it’

fighting back feeds their rage

best perhaps to drop it

bide our time and know that light

will triumph over dark

every year has one more day

than night, please hark