"what showing up means"

What does it mean to agree to show up? It means that the tired can wait. That it's almost irrelevant. You go anyway, despite all the excellent reasons not to go. If only the notebook, the blinking cursor on the computer screen were as loud and insistent as a screaming infant. All of this I chose--the children, two beautiful boys, this way of being in the world called a writer.Yet I kick back, dig my heels in so often, no no no I don't want to go. But even if I have to be dragged, I show up. And once I'm there, I'm there. My pen & paper, my two-month old son, know nothing of my reluctance and resentment. They know nothing of the difficulty of choosing again and again. They don't know that on some days it's a minor miracle that I'm there at all. All they know is my hand, my heart, my breath, my scent: there there there. And they are the ones who teach me--that showing up means everything. 

Linking up with Christina Rosalie's Just One Paragraph.

"choose softness instead"

I caught it. The hardening towards anger, the sharp edge of sleeplessness cutting into the morning. Casting blame around like confetti. Tears welling as I poured water in a slow circle over the coffee grounds, a holy ritual to bless the day, even now, even now, coaxing the dark elixir that comforts and revives. I caught sight of that tide as it swelled, seeing it unfurl fully before me: the yelling that would soon come, the desire to hit and hurt, maybe even the hitting of things. The wave of despair and its anguished narration. Can one tired hand, a hand bedazzled with mysterious and painful bug bites acquired in the night, calm that raging tide? What if I choose softness instead? I unwrapped my shoulders from around my ears. Sank into surrender in the armchair, nursing my baby. What if I choose softness instead. Let's find out.


Linking up with Christina Rosalie's Just One Paragraph.

"to own the space around my ears and into my heart"

It occurs to me that what I need more of in my life is music. Not more sleep, not a cleaner house, not a slighter ass or more time to write or practice yoga or to even want to have sex. Not more help, not less crumbs and dog and cat hair on the floor or a freaking half-hour window of time in which to vacuum the floor--no. Music. Loud, ache-releasing, cathartic, make-me-want-to-jump-and-run music. Songs from the 80s when I was still young and fresh and more myself than I might ever be again, something pure and true as first light. Or rainy-afternoon soft, cry-in-the-shower tender songs holding me gently like a safe open palm. My days are "mama-mama-mama" and oh shit he's crying again and the volume on the lowest of low but still I can hear the inane alphabetizations of LeapFrog and I swear they make me dumber as they are, no doubt, making him smarter. What sounds, in all of this, are my own? This occurs to me on Sunday afternoon as I cut up fruit for the week--cantaloupe pineapple watermelon--and own the kitchen with my knife skills and shaking honest-to-goddess luscious ass. MUSIC. Like I forgot in all this mess to turn on the soundtrack to my own life. I need to turn it up. Put my stamp on the day. Own the space around my ears and into my heart. Music. Yes.


Linking up with Christina Rosalie's Just One Paragraph.

"beauty amidst the constellations"

We wake to a plague of flies. My husband walks around with a rolled-up magazine in hand, ninja-like, the way he holds his body and mind steady to successfully kill them a form of meditation. I stand wherever I am, look around me and count them, my disgust and anger mounting as the number rises. Where on earth are they coming from? I think of my uncle's house, back when he was a farmer, how it was always overrun with flies, how we judged him. As flies alight on a dirty coffee mug, on the refrigerator door, the smudgy bathroom mirror, each one underscores my own feelings of inadequacy. They must be eradicated. I want to tell the truth as precisely and simply as I can about each moment, believing there will be beauty in the accuracy and clarity of the telling. I want to believe there is beauty here, amidst these constellations of accusing flies.

"all that exquisite road and the whole night ahead"

Free. Released from the daily grip of family, the small beloved clutches of two boys and their myriad of needs, taking to the road on a Friday night, even if just to the grocery store, elated and light, a mama alone singing dancing in her car. Bobbing along to Madonna's Holiday, I wonder what I would make of that song at a karaoke night, and suddenly, unexpectedly, I'm crying. I'm thinking back two months to being in labor on my back porch, how my doula and I did karaoke back there, George Michael and Prince, to get my energy and spirits up, how good that felt in the middle of the pain. How she later said she's never seen someone move so much while in active labor. And I'm crying because goddamned if I didn't give it everything I had, how I never worked harder at any single thing in my life and still they had to cut me open again. But just as it came the moment went, went on to the next verse and there was still all that exquisite road and the whole night ahead of me.


Linking up with Christina Rosalie's Just One Paragraph.