If it isn't one thing...

…it's your mother!

To all who were born, to all who gave birth, and to all who have created your own life as best you could, with your own sculpting, caring, articulate hands, to those who suffer the curve balls Life throws, to all who are mourning persons who are gone from our sight, or yearning for the survival of Our Mother, who art beneath our feet and supporteth us, holding us to her breast, to the mothers whose child is ill, or bent, or broken and requires you to give more than you ever thought possible to give, to all Earth's Children…

May your Mother's Day have been spent with a moment of reflection on the amazing odds that we exist at all!  I'm so glad that we do!

With thanks to the creative urges that pushed us down the tube and into this impossibly rich, complex, and ordinary miracle we call LIFE! May you thrive and flourish as if yours was the good-enough mother who has, does, or will beam her unconditional love at you, to envelop and surround you always.

I give thanks for the daughters and granddaughter, who flowed through me, and for the opportunity to witness their courage, creativity, and caring. 

I am full. I give thanks.

*   *   *   *   *   *   *   *   *   

Knowing we would be at camp for the Mother's Day Weekend, being Abuelo y Abuela for twenty one families, I wrote the following before we left early Friday morning:

If you don’t hear from me for weeks, months, years even, please don’t take it personally.

Don’t think I’ve forgotten you.

Don’t think you don’t count or matter to me.

Chock it up to life moving at warp speed, spinning me into a different dream that requires every synapse I can muster, every fiber full throttle, every every passion net catching hold of as much of the dream as it, and I, can possibly hold.

Writing holds my attention these days. Sometimes I poke my head above the spinning to catch my breath and realize that months have gone by since I’ve connected with you, or called, or written an ordinary letter or email.

There’s a stack of unanswered notes, cards, and, can you even believe it, Christmas Cards? For Christ’s sake! Probably, Christ would have me answer you, but how much did HE write? And I will one day answer you. It goes in spurts... getting out five or six responses in one afternoon, then drought again. 

How many friends? How many cousins, nieces, nephews, great nieces and nephews, siblings. Some of the nearest and dearest have been to visit our new digs; some have not. I doesn’t really matter, but I would love to give all a glimpse of this new life - this new city, neighborhood, view, and friends, colleagues, family we rarely saw, when we lived in Southern California... I’d love for all to see, to know, to understand what holds sway now... in this new chapter. 

What this fresh page has offered me is the chance to discipline myself to put B. I. C. (Butt In Chair) to write; to ask for support for that to happen on more than the occasional one-off writer’s get-together, but rather on a regular basis... weekly, which requires me to write daily to keep the momentum going... to keep the characters alive and whispering into my ear from somewhere under the desk or under the house, or under the world or next solar system over. I love when they do whisper. I love when they tell me where they’re going and who’s going with them. They introduce me to the wildest places, people, thoughts, and outlandishness. All of the characters seem quite familiar. It’s as if they have always been part of the family, and are only just now stepping out of the shadows, making their full presence known and prominent in my psyche. 

*  *  *  *  *  *  *  *  *  *  *  *  *  *  *  *  *  *  

My Grammy found her step-father soon after he’d hung himself in the garage. She had to report it to her mother, and witness the melt-down, in slow motion, like dominoes falling, un-preventably. Life is stranger than fiction.

This is the stuff of which the writing is made. BIC. PTP (Pen to Paper) and FTK... Fingers to Keys... not to be confused with WTF!

practicing peace. practicing presence. practicing phrases. practicing paying the piper. 

Writing takes time. Energy. Commitment. It takes everything I know how to give and more that I have yet to learn. It takes, to use a yogic phrase, counter poses. That doesn’t mean that I write at a counter... although, sometimes I do write standing, just to keep writing without my sad, sorry B.I.C, but rather heart opening poses, balancing poses, back-bending poses, and lunge. Don’t leave home without Lunge!

Please forgive my absence in your life, and know that I am in labor. I’ll let you know when the birth is over... the rearing has begun and the all night diner has mercifully closed it’s faucets, and the baby is toddling around on its own... 

My friend Jaimsyne wrote a cunning charmer about letting the dust bunnies collect, the bills go unpaid, the phone go unanswered... Writing takes that kind of social isolation.

SO, I’m finding. And, at the same time, every housework task becomes its own meditation... if I let it, when the characters chide, or tan my hide and deride the scenarios in which I’ve placed them. They are course correctors, bill collectors, benefactors and detractors. I love them all... the smarmy, the charming, the darning with faint praise... all of them!

Someday, you’ll meet them I hope. Someday, not today, you’ll love/hate/curse them as I do. Or you’ll enjoy their presence in your pre-falling-asleep hour and ask them to accompany you into your dreams. What they've got to say has helped me, these characters who present themselves to be written down and memorialized.

Thanks for listening, and thanks for understanding my intermittent absences.

You are loved. Most especially by me. 

I wouldn’t be here, but for you. I wouldn’t have come this far along my writerly path without your gentle nudging, listening, course corrections, and encouragement.

Thank you. Thank you. Thank YOU!