Word-world

Every few blogs or so, someone will say "You really ought to write a book." I'm not sure if it's because they enjoy the way I string words together, or because the stories from my own life seem unlikely enough to merit fiction, or simply that I can go on and on long enough to fill something that would be a couple of inches thick if I were writing in a format that justifies it. Write a book Laura, you should write a book, write a book. I have always thought that I was cooking on one, and the simple enormity of the task, coupled with the demands of my overwhelming daily life have kept it on the list of things I know I'll never actually get around to. Like learning higher mathematics and physics. Like actually going through the entire garage. Like traveling to Europe. Like learning to do lost-wax casting and making jewelry. Twenty years or so ago I did learn American Sign Language and fully immerse myself in that language by living in Deaf Culture to become an interpreter, and I did study astrology and Tarot ten years before that because I had to know those things completely, but I was younger then and wasn't actually participating in adult life and seemed to have more time for studies and creative persuits and my intellectual needs. Writing a book seems along the lines of learning an entire language enough to be fluent and mistaken for a native of it, or learning two intertwined systems of symbolic thought that are mathematically and symbol based until I didn't need any reference materials to read them. It's a gargantuan task.

In my reference library, the shelves of books that weren't culled in the recent purge, I have a couple dozen books on the subject of writing as well as the other topics I've just mentioned. As if buying books about writing books would somehow get a book written simply by reading them. This method has worked as well as buying DVDs for working out and then watching them without actually working out. My body never improved, and my ass is still the shape of a computer chair.

I do always say though, when you hear feedback from more than one source in the Universe you have to really consider it, and since I've been doing this daily blogging exercise I get the comment "You really need to write a book." far more often, and from many different people. I already have several programs that I never really bothered to learn to use, since they were too complicated and I wasn't really writing a book or a screenplay and I wasn't sure it wasn't a stage-play I wanted to do, they have just existed there gathering E dust.

The screenplay program, now that I've poked through it, is a system of laying out chronology in order to lead you through a story; character and event development toward the answer to a central question. That's the formula for a movie. I'm not writing a screenplay for a movie, and have the book "How not to write a screenplay" to prove it. The book writing software has character development, only on a larger scale, timeline and a whole group of more detailed boxes to fill out that help keep things organized. It's sort of like filling out a questionnaire about who's in your book, what they do and what happens. When you've answered all the questions, poof! Rough draft of a book. I'm starting with these two programs, even though it doesn't say anywhere that these two are meant to be used together.

What is amazing to me is how I know the people intimately, these characters. I know their names, who they are and where they came from. I know everything about them, and when I think of a question I know the answers. My own past is spread amongst them, some of my experiences have happened to one, some to another. They are all doing something together, yet separately, and for apparently different reasons, and yet they are all me at the same time. They are like my dreams; they are me, or symbols I use to represent things from my own life, and they fit seamlessly together to say something that makes sense in one way or another.

The thing that keeps amazing me, and once I find time to sit down and write them, is that I don't know exactly what they will do next. I have no doubt who they are, but they keep doing things that surprise me, and that's the fun part of writing them. I know where they are headed and what they are trying to accomplish, but the things they're doing along the way never cease to amaze me. They have hardly left town and already I have thought "No!! Don't do it! But they really do as they will, I'm just here to write it down. It may take me forever and a day to capture it. I have so many people who need me, and I use my morning silence to blog, my afternoons to earn an income, and my evenings to be married and manage a family.

They're real though, these women. I call them "My people." Michael and Holly will say they're going somewhere and ask if I want to join them and I'll say "No thanks, I think I want to spend the evening with my people. To be honest, all I've done so far is fill out boxes, some of them with hundreds of words, and where I've left off is: Chapter One (blinking cursor) and then the phone rings or someone comes over or IMs me or needs me or has a crisis or something, and I don't want to sit down to that first epic write until I have a couple of uninterrupted hours. Somehow I know that it will set the tone for the whole project, how it goes in the first dozen paragraphs of that first chapter. Maybe that's superstitious. Maybe it's intuition. It comes from that place I listen to though, so I'm listening.

So I've written hundreds of words in preparation for this project, I know who my people are, and what they are trying to do. I'm not sure if they are going to find exactly what they are looking for, because even in word-world life rarely hands you what you expect. I don't really know what will happen between where they are and where they are going. I can't wait to find out.

Someday I'll let you know, hopefully with the love and support of a major publisher.

We won't be in Kansas any more

Our chance to be in service to others is everywhere lately. Last night Michael and I were counting our opportunities, and the people who let us be there for them when they need us, and it shined a new light on service as a way to get out of ourselves and where we are when we feel uncomfortable or unhappy. This is a basic thing we learned when we first got to the rooms. We've been looking at different situations and different people and their demands or needs and feeling everything from resentment to gratitude, and then when we really thought about it they were all calls to service, just packaged differently. Even the most frustrating interactions have been opportunities to do this, and sometimes the best thing for someone, the thing that's the most helpful or right, isn't always pleasant or easy, but when we listen to the Universe and come from love it's all service, and that's how we keep what we have- by giving it away.

Even the people who are feeling angry with us for how we are proceeding with our lives and who may not see that what we are doing or how we are living or going to live are getting hit with the service stick, whether they know it or not. Doing what is the highest good for all involved does not always feel good to everyone.

Things are changing, there's a giant storm brewing, and we've been given the task of battening some things down, and letting others fly into the wind, all in service to the rightness of the highest good. Sometimes it's hard to hear that small still voice when the pressure's dropping and I can see the tornado on the horizon, but it's always there if I listen for it.

I have to remember, when I come from love there is no wrong way to move and the basement's big enough to hold us all.

The smell of agony

I don't know why I have this pain in my head all the time. I've had an MRI, a CAT scan, a talk with a neurologist, several different drugs (both narcotic and non-narcotic), massage and prayer. So far, narcotic painkillers win as the one thing that has been able to dull if not remove the constant agony that lives in the neighborhood of my eyes. Those are gone, and I'm not really interested enough in a dependency on them to seek more so I haven't. The new drugs from the neurologist that are supposed to prevent them in the first place are doing nothing at all, they are the equivalent of sugar pills. The Naprocin/Imatrex combo bullets that go for 21 dollars a piece, even from Canada do nothing. Ice packs change the flavor of the headache, and a frozen eyeball is it's own special weirdness, but not really relief. The neuro-meds let the pain out of it's small box over my right eye so it had room to stretch out and get comfortable in my whole forehead, but like we all do it's returned to it's comfort zone while not giving up its newfound space, so now I have both.

I want to use dramatic statements like "I'm losing my will to live" or "Just chop my head off above the ears, I don't care" but I don't really want to die or go around with half a face, I just want this to stop or find some relief. I would swallow any pill from any source in this moment if I were promised two hours respite from the pain, regardless of its content or origin. That's bad. My new sensation is now "Ice pick through the roof of the mouth" which connects with the pain in my forehead. I don't even want to have this day. I don't care how much personal growth it may contain, or who I may be of service to, or what I might learn, I just don't want it. When it was my hands or my knee that hurt I would lean away from them and say "I can only get this far away from the pain." but when it's my head there's no leaning, because the hunk of meat that perceives is also the thing that hurts. If I didn't know it would kill me I would borrow Andrew's weapon and fire a round in one temple and out the other, just to make a path for some fresh air to flow through, and possibly let some of this out before it explodes on its own. I have no desire for death, so that is not a plan, and yet I can picture doing just that. The strength of my skull prevents me from digging my fingers in and scooping out large chunks of rotted brain, the decaying matter that must be the source of this. It's not killing me in any way that shows up on medical monitoring equipment, but I am dying, have no doubt. I can only imagine what it would smell like in there.

Bureaucracy, Mail and my giant Clusterfuck

I promised I wouldn't let the mail pile up on my desk and breed any more. Michael brought half a trash bag home one day, some of the unopened envelopes were from 2005 and he went through every piece and did an opening and discarding ceremony for me. What was left were about ten important things, and a tiny bit of current mail that was important. All of my real bills except for my shop rent come to me in E form, so most of the mail I get at the shop is nominally important or simply a waste of paper. Michael gets his mail at the shop, because our mailbox is out by the street and sometimes kids will take it out and scatter it. Andrew gets his mail at the shop because he never wants to miss a piece from the Army. Andrew gets a LOT of mail, but really never opens it, or opens it in my shop then leaves it, in a big opened pile somewhere near my work space, then I put it back in the box. I am very self-righteous about not being anyone's mail carrier, and not really helpful in this. I have actually created a useless resentment around it.

One entity that sends mail to both Michael and I is Health and Human Services. They are the ones that gave and then rescinded our food stamps. They are the ones that approved MediCal which gave me access to medical care for the first time in over ten years. We really needed those food stamps at this time of the world, and it hurts not to have them. If you read me at all, you know how badly I need medical care, and what the bills would be if we were paying out of pocket.

I have kept my mail commitment in principle, but not in spirit, and I have majorly fucked up. Stupid mail goes in the trash, important mail goes in the box. What have I known yet completely overlooked? Mail fro HAHS is always timed and needs a response by a certain date. I have been putting those letters, both for Michael and myself into the box and calling it done. The desk is still fairly orderly, and I have been feeling pretty proud of myself. The problem is we were supposed to respond to some things by a certain date and I just let it sit there and I am currently not covered by MediCal now. Right before a surgery I really want. Right after I visited a neurologist, and have prescriptions filled all the time.

In the office, when we go there, there are always a million kids who are not really being watched by their parents, yelling and banging stuff. There are people who are easy to judge, not people like us who used to have a good income but since the crash are really struggling. That's bullshit, the part where we're different from them, but it's easy to fall into while frustration builds and we watch the same video on "Healthy snacks" replay endlessly at a volume that can be heard over the unruly children. We have no one case-worker, they all have a revolving case-load. Sometimes we get a reasonable person, the last time Michael has gone he's gotten the large and unhappy woman who has 500 tasks to do in only 8 hours of underpaid time, who assumes everyone is lying about their circumstance.

Have you any idea how hard it is to prove a negative? Prove that I'm NOT making a ton of money and squirreling it away and that we just want to live on food stamps and MediCal so we can get over on the government? She straight up accused Michael of lying, reminded him that it's a federal offense to do so and that he can go to prison for it. This is a man with over 8 1/2 years clean who has actually been to prison for his drug behavior, and she has the nerve to threaten him with it now because he's trying to feed his family. She assumes my mattress is stuffed with secret cash that I just skim from the thousands that flow in every day, and how do I prove to her that life is actually the opposite these days? Every time they ask for something we track it down and bring it to them, print-outs and receipts and copies of things. Next they will want documents written in our blood, which we will supply. Proving what I don't make in this economy is difficult though.

The truth is though, and this is where I have to feel so very bad all by myself: Things were rolling along fine. Michael did all the footwork to get us hooked up with these services while I stayed home and kept my illness company between tattoos. I didn't bring the right mail home, I put it in the "important" box, and now we're cut off and have to go reestablish my healthcare benefits. It could have been fine, and I am the one who has created this problem. We are the ones who will try to go unfuck it, because he doesn't own a blame-thrower and wouldn't leave me on my own anyway.

I feel useless in the ways of bureaucracy, I'm an artist. That is a very thin and irrelevant excuse, and I feel like a piece of shit around this fact. I'm hoping that by looking her in the eye, whoever "she" is today, I can say "I am telling you the truth, please see me as I am." and get this fixed. I am not a liar, or a cheat, or a fraud. I'm sick, I need care, and it would be nice to feed my family while I try to sort out this disease that keeps me from the life I know I could be living.

Those kids better not be banging that shit around this morning though, or I will so mom up on them and tell them to knock it off.

Park Toys and other amusements

I've spent quite some time lately, caught in my thoughts about myself as a parent, my thoughts about my own parents on one side of me and my children on the other. Yesterday, a day which I have always shared with my Grandmother and therefore with my Dad because I can never think of her without thinking of him was a very reflective day. When I say "My own parents" I usually mean my father and his mother, because the woman who gave birth to me is like the "dark matter" between galaxies in the Universe on the science shows I love so well, un-seeable, not measurable unless you photograph everything that is there and chart the spaces between and know that since there is never nothing it must be something even if it doesn't reflect light or show up on even the highest powered telescope. I could compare her to a black hole, but those can be seen and actually create activity or movement of some kind, and that would be giving too much credit.

If my life were a teeter-totter that I started walking when I was little, up the incline toward the center fulcrum, I think I could accurately say that I had one foot to either side of the balancing point now. Just by shifting my weight I can make one side go up or down. It's fully loaded and evenly balanced and there I am in the center with my children on one side and my parenting on the other, and I'm taking as long as life allows me to balance here to do this trick.

I had a highly emotional call with my Big Daddy yesterday; my emotional and spiritual advisor, my font of wisdom, the source of all I know about parenting as a positive force or logic as a way to proceed. When I write about my Grandmother who I treat as my own I'm writing about his mother, who is to him who he is to me. I forget that sometimes. Did you ever have the toy called the Viewmaster when you were little? It had round disks with little slides arranged around the edge and binocular viewing. With no light source of it's own you would point it at the light and look through it to a screen that would present 3D and highly realistic photos because there were actually two pictures of each on the disk, one for each eye. It was like looking into a real world. Push down on the lever to advance the disk and you were on to the next picture.

I feel like I have just advanced the disk and my life and my Dad's life are starting to overlap to make one deep and dimensional picture of time that I spend a lot of time gazing into. My sons are the ages I was when I had them, and I must be somewhere around the age that he was when he started doing the things for me that I must do for them, as they are the ages I was then. If not a viewmaster as metaphor, how about a hall of mirrors that goes back through time with only a slight curve that prevents you from seeing the beginning or the end, but only the several sequences that happen right before and after where you stand right now? I cried because I am starting to feel in my own life how hard it must have been for him to do for me what I must now do for them, and have a new understanding of how much he must love me by experiencing how much I love them. Take it back a generation and think that my Grandmother loved him that way, and he loved her, and she loved me, I love them... It's almost Einsteinian in theory of emotion, but relativity was never an equation that was written to encompass feelings I don't think, was it?

I go to my Dad, to talk about where I am in my life and what I'm learning, or what frustrates me, or what I desperately wish for my children and he always has and freely gives what I need in that moment. Just yesterday I got a glimpse of the duality clicking into place to make that illusion of the depth of three dimensions and it made me feel emotional to the point of tears. Add to that his offers of assistance for me, the way I try to help my own kids, except I'm truly adult and know the difference between seeing my parent as a foregone resource and myself as an adult who should be able to provide those same resources to my own children, who are adults, and I'm back between the mirrors; back in the center of the teeter-totter, feeling like I should be taller or more capable or even more like my dad who has always been such a superman to me. I feel like I should be better prepared for this. I feel like I should be able to do a better job. I wonder if, when he was where I am right now he felt like I feel. I look at my kids and remember feeling the way I think they feel, wouldn't it make sense that if it's true looking forward it could be equally true looking backward? And I'm in the middle, thinking, balancing, shifting my weight so that first one side goes up while the other touches the ground, and then back again.

I spent time with two friends yesterday who just had their first baby. She is amazing. They are in the time of parenting where visual stimulation and how they want to talk to her and what kind of beliefs they want to give her are their main concerns. She's a left-handed Aquarian woman, married to a Cancer man, like I am. She hasn't told her toxic mother she has a daughter, just like I didn't. She is still feeding her child from her own body, and her baby is so recently a part of her physically that they are still connected. I looked at them, and longed for the days when my children and their futures still belonged exclusively to me, were in my own realm of creation, and I thought that I would get to make all the really important decisions and be their most important influence; when they were small enough to hold at my breast and I thought that the simple power of my love and my beliefs and affirmations would create the worlds they would walk through, and I knew that who they would be would flow into them with love and milk and that I would form their lives much the way my body formed theirs. This is not how it really is, but I watched them, and was jealous that the fantasy hadn't been inexorably pulled from their grasp yet, that they still got to gaze into her eyes and believe.

Maybe at some higher stage of my evolution love will be just that, and freestanding. It won't be partnered with fear- fear of loss, fear of failure, fear of somehow reaching the last mirror in the line and simply ending. Maybe my tears are just feeling, and it's alien to me to actually feel since I have spent so many years dedicated to not really feeling at all.

Maybe I just need to change disks in the viewmaster and the whole story will be revealed.

Half-Day

Today is the half-day in my year. My half birthday, my Grandmother's birthday. When I was younger, let's say 7, the day that I officially became 7 1/2 was very important, and it has always been special that my Grandmother and I shared the birthday/half-day polarity. She would have been 114 today, and I am 48 and a half. I can see 50 from here. Not close enough to throw a stone, but certainly close enough to ride a bike if I had one and were inclined to ride it. This is what I was able to find online about the transit Sun opposed natal Sun, which is what you call half-day in astrological jargon:

"Sun opposition Sun
This is a time of the year when you are more likely to catch a cold or to feel under the weather, unappreciated, and generally ill at ease. Tensions with others can come from a lack of self-confidence or a sudden awareness of unfulfilled wishes and goals. You are unlikely to feel on top of your game now, so don't push matters. Instead, take time for rest and relaxation. Review your goals and revise them if need be."

Not how I've always thought of this day of the year, but if it's online it must be true, right? Today I am experiencing half-day as split completely down the middle: I'm fearful and in faith. I'm spiritual, but oh so pissed. I'm exhausted, but excited about my work day. I'm tolerant and accepting of others, but ready to draw some lines and demand that they be respected. My headache has been medically released from it's box over my right eye and is now spread evenly over my whole forehead; instead of one class A alien monster with bladed spikes it's more like two semi-pro tennis players engaged in an endless match where the score is never love-love. How did tennis ever get a number called "Love" anyway? I might take up tennis and quit every game when I reach that score to see if it improves my place in the Universe simply by it's scoring.


I much prefer another transit that is happening in my own chart right now. It is on the books for August 3 until October 19 since Pluto is such a slow moving (non) planet. I am as likely to play rugby or handball as I am to eat liver or vote republican, but I like the idea of "incredible energy at my disposal":

"Pluto Opposition Mars
Your goals and ambitions are the most important things in your life right now and you have incredible energy at your disposal. Use it to follow your dreams -- but you are not likely to need much urging on that score. You are quite driven now; you feel almost compulsive in your need to achieve. You may find it quite difficult to slow down; if you are already a workaholic, you might overwork yourself now in your attempt to get ahead. You could easily suffer physical side effects due to your hard work; exhaustion, nervousness and migraine headaches are all resultant possibilities. Even if you are normally not very directed or career-oriented, these are possibilities for you now; the extreme to which you take the current energy depends on your native levels of ambition and self-determination. If you are already something of an aggressive person, you may have to try even harder than usual to rein in your temper at this time; you have a tendency to be belligerent, impatient or domineering due to your newly competitive bent. Take out your aggressions with some vigorous physical exercise, such as playing rugby or racquetball."

I haven't really shown tendencies to be belligerent in the past, in the old me, but impatient and domineering? Those are very familiar coordinates I've used for navigation. At the moment I'm feeling angry and taken advantage of, and I can really see these qualities coming right back as I try to change some situations with all of this "Incredible energy" I'm supposed to have at my disposal.

In a mix of my therapist's words and my own complaints: I have spent over a year doing for other adults what they should be able to do for themselves. I have been preventing them from reaching their full potential by making it possible for them to do nothing to further their own lives. I cut someone's legs off when I allow them to rely on me for what they should appropriately be handling. Growing up isn't an option, something one does when they feel ready, it's something that happens at a certain time in life that comes whether or not they think they are ready or not. If a person doesn't feel ready when that time comes, you can look to their parent(s) and ask "Why didn't you prepare this person to walk into the grown-up world with all the skills necessary to succeed?" If I add my Big Daddy's wisdom to the mix there is the assertion that Michael and I, at this point in our lives have the right to live how we want to live. We've worked for years to attain the lifestyle we choose for ourselves, and that shouldn't have to include living in poverty to support other adults who should be supporting themselves.

"I drank for years, years ago, and wasn't a good mom when you were ten. Get over it. You're 25 now, get a job and pay for your own life." I can say that in my head, but here, on half-day, talking to you, I have the hardest time imagining saying it to someone in real life. Where is the spirituality and gentleness in that? Where is all my evolution in how pissed off and taken advantage of I feel? "I've prepared a good and healthy dinner, and I'm sorry if you've decided you don't eat beef any more, I'm not driving you to get a second dinner that I will pay for." I said that the other night, to a different person; a dramatic martyr who really didn't like it but did get over it. "I know you'd "rather" have me go get you things think you need, right away, but I need you to understand the concept of NO MONEY for that, and I'm not going to do it for you." I tried that one out on the phone last night. Have you ever heard the term "went over like a lead balloon?" It was like that.

Half-day and it's imaginary line seems to be presenting itself this year not so much as a marker in time, but as a line between how I feel and what I would say if I had no filter or fear of consequence and what I actually say and pay for. There is a fat line, drawn in the largest Sharpie marker called Half-life, which is how long approximately it's been since I've spoken to my own mother. Fear of lines that thick being drawn between me and any of my own children keep my words timid and my wishes fermenting like fruit juice in a sealed bottle in a hot car. You know, when it rolls under the seat and you miss it when you clean out your car so it's there for a whole summer or even a year, and the pressure builds as it undergoes it's chemical changes? Only the thickness of the glass prevents an explosion, but really, for how long?

Other people have this concept of family, and they'll get angry or exchange words and turn right around and assure you that family connections never really end, the most outrageous things heal over time because "It's family." I don't share that perspective, I have no siblings that I've fought with and made up with a thousand times, and I only have one parent, I discarded the other almost half a lifetime ago. When I said the Sharpie was wide I meant WIDE. I don't want to make unreasonable and impossible demands such as "Stop being Gay, it upsets my ideas of propriety." or "If you don't love Jesus I just don't know how you can be in this family." (Two ideas that are alien to me, I borrow those from other families I have heard of) I just want people to wipe the counter after they make a sandwich, and buy their own food and cigarettes; have jobs and share the proceeds from them to pay the enormous overhead it takes to run this house, help keep the quarter-acre yard from being swallowed by nature. I even want them to have careers and dare I say move into their own homes someday and take on all the burdens of adult life.

I had my first child at 23, and I'm almost 50 and I'm still answering the question "what's for dinner" and giving out lunch money. I'm kind of thinking I would like to start settling into whatever my idea of middle-age, half-life might be, and spending it with my husband, not still raising kids that are the ages I was when I had them. To be fair, one of them (the only one likely to ever read this in the first place) is not what this essay is about. He comes closest to meeting my wishes regarding the conduct of adult children. I still pay for a lot of his life though, in a time where I am struggling to pay for my own, just saying.

It's half-day. Happy Birthday Grandma, wherever you are, you're still here with me too. I'll celebrate "and a half" myself, and the proper thing to say to me is just "happy" without the birthday part on the end, because it's only halfway. I'll continue to figure out how to say and do the things that need to happen for me to feel content, and I think I've put in the time and effort to have my simple needs met, for me, by me. For us, by us, and by us I mean Michael and I. I'm not a single mother any more, I'm a happily married woman with four grown kids.*

*Sure Molly is only 16, but she's finished her requirement for high school, hooking herself up with job interviews like a mad-woman and is enrolling in college even as I type. She has chosen to act like an adult, so I'm going to treat her as one.

Kelly Ree

I really never stroll down any memory lanes about my first marriage, my trainer husband, because having traveled that road and back again I already know the landscape intimately. I'll make an exception today though, because what I want to show you lies far down that road and it's the only path that leads there. This isn't so much about him as it is that time in my life, which to be fair, was magical in so many ways.

I had some friends who had some friends who were planning a wedding in the park in Huntington Beach. An outdoor amphitheater setting, no electricity, I can't even remember if there was more than a public park-style bathroom available. It was beautiful though, with a walking path around a lake that would hold mist in it's palm in the mornings and often had white cranes perching in the eucalyptus that lined the walkway. My friends said "Our friends are getting married and they need someone to sing at their wedding. We told them you sing and they'd like to hear you." That was before fear of performance was my companion and I said yes without a thought, and my only reply was "You'll have to find me a guitar player." As it turned out their next door neighbor was a very good guitar player ( http://payplay.fm/jimbrumm ) and he agreed to accompany me.

We didn't meet till the rehearsal, and I remember walking around a bend in the path and looking up at a man with a guitar sitting on the very top step of the rustic wooden bench-seating. My first thought was "Huh, I'm going to marry that man." which sometime later I did. I don't remember what songs we did, or what the wedding was like, or even that I was meeting two people who were not only getting married but would become two of my closest friends for years to come. I just remember the way he looked with that small-bodied Guild guitar cradled in his arms, waiting for my voice to join his. We were good, I remember that. We sat at his kitchen table for hours at the reception singing every song we knew, just like like Bobby McGee and that truck driver. Eventually we married each other, and had ten years of ups and downs. Lots of ups really, it was just the end that crashed, much like the old saying "It's not the falling that's bad, but the landing that will kill you." That was all twenty years ago, and holds no emotional charge for me now, other than sometimes when I finish a really good book I reach for the phone to call him and say he simply must read it before I remember that we're not really friends any more.

Now I'm going to get to the story I want to tell you. Tom and Lynne, the bride and groom from my introduction lived next door to us, and one night Lynne came over to show me her positive pregnancy test. I was thrilled, I was jealous, the sound of my own biological clock was ticking almost loud enough to drown out a word she was saying. I was twenty two and married, and they were married, and we were all such grown-ups, weren't we? Lynne ate well, took vitamins, didn't smoke and was just somehow clean in the way she lived, she was making a super baby in there. I can't remember if we started walking that circular path around the park where we met for her wedding while she was pregnant or if that came later. I remember waiting and waiting for that baby though. Jim's name for the baby was Helmut while she was still an it.

Of our circle of friends who all did home births (Lynne included) this was the first and only hospital birth. She went first of all of us, and we didn't know yet that we could have our babies at home in ways that felt right for us. I remember the night she was in labor, we all ate some blueberry thing and she threw up. We wished them bye on their way to the hospital and they returned the next day with someone who would become and still is a very, very important person in my life. Kelly Marie Welles.

She looked like her dad, from that first day, and had a set of pipes on her that could fill a whole apartment complex with her daily afternoon cry. Lynne made her a blanket (I think Lynne was the one that sewed it) and it's name was Botett. Botett remained shoved in Kelly's mouth, either a corner or a section from the middle, switching out location only when Kelly decided it was too soggy. I personally would have made the soggy call much earlier than she did, but then Botett wasn't my thing. I gagged more than once watching so much soggy blanket shoved into that tiny mouth, but hey, it was better than the big BIG voice coming out at times, and it was just a part of who Kelly was. I kept saying she was too old for it and Lynne should "lose" it, but the way Botett finally went was that Lynne would ease it out of her sleeping hands at nap time, cut a few inches off and re-hem it until it was eventually the size of a large handkerchief. Kelly must have thought she was getting so big, because Botett was getting so small! Eventually, it just wasn't large enough to shove enough in her mouth and have enough left over to fiddle and fondle and she was done with it.

Lynne and I started our daily walks around the park with one single stroller. Then I had Paul, and she had Andrea (Nanny) then I had Andrew and one single stroller became two double strollers. Around and around we would go every single day. We lived next door to each other in tiny apartments with two kids each, me with the boys and her with the girls for quite a few years. Jim and Lynne were closer, Tom and I liked to hang out and listen to Supertramp.

We moved into my Grandmother's house- my childhood home - after she left her body and my Big Daddy married his one true love but we still saw each other regularly. It wasn't until we moved up here in 1988 that we really lost contact with them. Lynne was one of the people I called on to provide a signed and notarized affidavit that I had lived at that address during my pregnancy and gave birth to a live baby when I finally got Andrew a birth certificate when he was eight.

I remember Kelly coming to visit me up here the summer she was 15 or so. It was strange to see that golden-haired baby in my house as a beautiful brown-haired young woman. It's strange to think that Molly is now older than Kelly was for that visit, that Kelly is now older than I was when she was born. I think maybe she had just the littlest crush on Paul that summer, and I suspect that they smoked hella pot together while they ranged all over this hot wine valley together.

She returned to live her with me in her twenties. I was in the thick of my drinking, and she stayed just until after I found recovery. What a wild and shitty ride that must have been, none of it was pretty, except for the love we have always had for each other no matter the circumstance. She worked at the Napa Emergency Women's Shelter, and if I'm correct that's where her love of helping and protecting women and children in need got its first professional footing in her life. Jasper came into her life when she lived here, a big gangling large-footed bumbler of a puppy who is still her first love. My little dogs live daily in the pen that she constructed for him to keep him safe when she went to work. My relationship with Drinking Joe, and the last hundred drinks or so of my alcoholic career, coupled with the roller-coaster ride that is early sobriety were her impetus to go, off into her truly adult life; the life where she wasn't living with a parent either real or adopted.

Now she's in Florida, and owns a house, and has been in the same solid, healthy and loving relationship for years. She's talking about having a baby of her own, and I'm kind of dying to see some wedding pictures from that east coast someday. She's a major big-sister influence in Molly's life, even electronically from afar. When she writes to me her letters are long and thoughtful, extremely well-written and insightful. I am awestruck and amazed and oh so proud of the adult Goddess she has become. I don't know for sure, but I'm betting she no longer needs to scream for an hour or two every afternoon, so regularly that you could set your clock by the sound.

Happy Birthday Kelly Ree, you make me so proud to know you, to have watched you become who you are since you were a ring at the bottom of an old-school test-tube pregnancy test. I'd wish you the best life, but you've already gone off and created that for yourself, so I'll wish that someday you have a golden-haired little girl just like you were and get to ride this ride from the beginning just like I have.

I love you madly, deeply and forever.

Through a dark lens

Is this a black day, or at least darker than usual? I woke feeling overwhelmed by the weight of real life today. Last night I asked Michael if maybe all this spiritual growth and musing I'm immersed in is just my way of living up high, high enough to see that things are in serious disarray on the ground in many ways; observing but not really participating?

Too many people. Not enough money. Not enough contribution to the maintenance of this home, and everyone but us being just fine about that. Michael is Cancer, and being at home on the ground is part of his nature. It is he who gives the most attention to the mechanics of daily life, and though I'm making a real effort to contribute more to things of this world I do live in my Aquarian clouds quite a bit. I'm floating around in deep philosophical revelations and no one's doing the dishes. I'm building houses from cards of empathy and acceptance and he is firmly rooted in accountability and the correctness of certain obligations. We do all owe our fair share in this large community in a small container. Am I being escapist and calling it spiritual?

I can feel his frustration, and it becomes my own. When I tune into his observations and see him suffer they become mine and rational or not, I cry because I feel it's my fault. "It" being my fault is a favorite frayed book that I've had since childhood, and I know the story so well I don't even have to look at the pages to describe the illustrations. He and I are united in our desires for our lives, in a way I've never shared with another human being, yet I am so easily pulled down the rabbit hole of philosophy and "what if" speculation. Colors, lifetimes, planes of existence, string theory, the spectrum of perception; mention any of these or an infinite palette of other topics and I will go for two hours of discussion while no one but him does the laundry, or even notices that we're the only ones who supply the soap.

We need a plan, we have a plan. We have little or no time alone to discuss what needs to happen to transform life here on the ground. I have a disease, am I given too much leeway on its account? I can hardly hold all the important things in one place between my ears because they share the space with so much pain, but he's in pain too and where am I? Writing about metaphysical concepts or pondering time as a linear force and why it only seems to move in one direction. I feel guilty, I feel sad, I feel as though I commit the great sin of sloth, with pain as my grand excuse. I have four children, even though I gave birth to only three of them, and much of my attention is given to making excuses or simply looking at the bright side. These are not arguments, because we both believe the same things, and yet we talk and talk and he's frustrated and I want to cry. I'm ticking away the finite moments of a marriage that can only last till death do us part, and those moments are being spent in angst and discomfort far more often than I would wish.

I feel that since he's being entirely logical, my usual talent, it's me who needs to do differently. My head hurts so bad and I need to find more workspace on my table in there for some real construction and repair. It's like pushing aside the sea to get more room on the beach to spread out the blueprint though, the water just rushes back in as fast as I try to sweep it away. I cried last night, but not enough, so the residue of tears is like mold on the walls of the inside of my head. If not black, this day is at least several shades darker than I'm used to lately, and nothing shines.

I create, promote or allow everything in my experience. Knowing this, it must be me who needs to change, I can't let Michael feel he is alone in the lifeboat while I float like a weather balloon tethered by a thin line. I feel powerless, and helpless in the face of this, and I need to be something solid my husband can lean on, as he is for me. The first two cards in any house you construct with them lean equally on each other, and they have to balance before you add more. I feel like the only thing that is solid about me is the love and the pain, and I keep slipping over into mirror-world where everything is connected and anything is possible. Could I love this man any more, could I be any less helpful? "This is all your fault Laura" echoes in my mother's voice and I am not finding the knob to lower the volume. There's a real need for me to step up here, and I can't remember how to find my own feet.

I love all these children, and want them around me, and I also want to live in a treehouse far above all of this with only the man I chose for the rest of my time; when it's just he and I there is none of this, only hope and possibility. I want to truly feel my connection to all that is, and I also want to be just us two. I want to be the two of Cups, not so much the two of Pentacles endlessly juggling near the agitated sea. Love and pain, endlessly passing from hand to hand inside the lemniscate. I want a better yet non-narcotic pill to ease my head so that there is room for real planning and manifestation, not just the blows of the invisible hammer. Today's thousand-word offering is just "I want, I need, I feel." and goes nowhere, like a dog chasing it's tail.



Could there be any worse time to exist purely from the neck up? Is there ever a good time for that? I know that it's not now, but really, is it ever the perfect time to forget I'm navigating a whole body and not just a head floating through space?

Sports are only stupid to me OR My Epic Fail

There are two reasons I can think of for my epic fail as a supportive parent this softball season, not counting illness, which would make three.

One is that when I was a bumbling fat kid with little or no coordination I lived in the world of books. I only wanted to read, or draw, or do anything else that didn't include running. "Do we have to have her on our team? You take her." is humiliating when you're the last one left to be picked. "Laura, how about if you're the scorekeeper?" Fine alternative, but I would either hide my book on the clipboard or draw very nice illustrations around the paper, and I'm not sure I ever actually watched or counted the score. How mad can two teams of girls playing anything at all get when they find that no one knows who's actually winning a game? To be fair, I hid books inside math or science textbooks, right under the edge of desks, or anywhere else I could put them too so that I could read rather than do anything connected with school. I would ask to go to the bathroom, and stay gone for whole class periods reading in the stall with my feet up so no teacher could see them under the door.

The second is the fact that my Big Daddy, who never missed a weekend with me, worked at Anaheim Stadium back when the Angels were there. He did something big and important with parking lot people and ushers and ticket takers. I was sure he was the boss of the whole place, except for the hot dog and peanut guys who were separate. There was a room with a man who had straight pins in his mouth and a tape measure around his neck, and rows upon rows of polyester sport-coats and trousers for employees to wear. We would often start in that room. He was a very nice man who's name I don't remember. Maybe it was Al.

Maybe I was supposed to stay in there with him? I don't know, but I didn't. My Big Daddy had a walkie talkie, and would walk all around the whole stadium doing important things. I couldn't always go because he was working. I had free run of an entire ball-park, while stupid baseball went on and on forever before we could go have fun. Sometimes I would sit in this seat or that and read, but after a million hours I would get restless. I would go into doors marked "Employees Only" and down halls and through more doors until someone eventually confronted me. "Little girl, are you lost? You're not supposed to be in here." Sometimes stern, sometimes concerned. "Do you know who my Daddy is? You call him on your walkie talkie!" hand on hip, didn't he know who I was?

A golf cart would come and take me back to the coat room with the nice man. A whole baseball game is forever to wait when all you want is your dad, and the fun that just being with him always is. Did you know that a baseball announcer's voice echos and bounces off the top part of the seats if you go way up to the very top rows? Do I really remember that you can see the Matterhorn from there? Did you know that the Matterhorn was the tallest mountain in Orange County and you see it long before you pull into the Disney parking lot? I saw it as an adult a few years ago, it's really not that large. Tinkerbell used to come down a wire with a spotlight on her from the top of that mountain right before the fireworks started.

Baseball is boring and I hate it. It represents waiting forever to have fun, and "I need you to stay out of trouble." while the eons passed.

By ninth grade I had injured my knee, and actually got all 40 PE credits by drawing posters for the locker room to try and trick other girls into going out for sports that were stupid and boring. "Play Tennis!" in fancy cool letters, shaped like a tennis racquet. "Volleyball is fun!" which is a lie. "WHS Softball, building team spirit!" Whatever, they had to wear mustard yellow uniforms, not a good color for a fat girl on drugs. Showers used to be mandatory after PE, and the skinny girls would laugh at me naked and white as pure innocence, fat and awkward. I skipped all that. I hate sports, with a passion that is not rational. There is a law of basic physics that states: Any game played with a ball, will eventually hit me right in the face. I still have tetherball nightmares sometimes.

K and I were going to try out for drillteam there for a minute, but we smoked too much pot, and were discovering LSD and a best friendship that would endure for over thirty years. I think we went to two try-out practices. Boston- It's been such a long time, I think I should be going. I was a full on choir nerd, and only the drama kids were nerdier than we were, except they thought it was the other way around.

I hate sports so much that I have declared my home a sports-free zone. It was in Michael's pre-hire interview, whether or not he watched any of them on TV, because I would never have a game playing in my environment, that's a deal breaker. The super bowl, maybe, if no one will give me any shit if I read until the commercials come on. Probably not, no one can ever resist the urge to yell at the TV, and that bothers me enough to go out and kill random strangers. It's irrational and intense, this hatred of all sports, but it's as constant as the northern star, I can always navigate with that as a reference point.

I tried to go to one of Molly's games a couple of seasons ago, and the other parents gave me dirty looks. I'm all tattooed and read my book till my daughter is at bat. I only really care how she's doing, those are their kids and of no interest to me. I didn't go back. When Grandma and Grandpa were visiting recently we all went to a game, including two of her brothers. Between the crowd yelling things and the girls with their wood-pecker-to-the-head "Hey batter batter blah blah blah!" taunting chat I made it for two innings. Michael and I went to smoke, and since my car was right there I settled into the warm seat and couldn't get my headache back through the door opening to return to the game. I meant to read, but I fell blissfully asleep and missed the whole thing. That was my one attempt this season to watch the most important person to me, do the thing that is so important to her, the thing she's so good at.

Parental guilt, while a lot like roasting over a slow fire has not been enough to get me into the stands to root for her, although I've either taken her to practices or hooked her up with rides there if I felt too bad to drive. I know this has hurt her, and even that hasn't gotten me to games. Her dad and his wife are at almost every one, and I think they like it. I feel terrible about it, but I have those feelings at home, not at the Kiwanis stadium.

Last night Michael stopped by after work for the last inning and a half of the last game of the season, the game where Molly and her team went all the way to Champions of the season. He texted me constant updates. I shared them in facebook statuses. I became excited, I couldn't look away from my phone. If there were a job as a sports announcer via text, Michael could apply for it and get it, he's really good at it. They won. 5-3. I actually cried, over sports.

They are the champions!!!! I am totally proud, and happy for Molly who has worked really hard all season and even played with injuries because her team needed her. She's showed me commitment to a group, and drive, an ambition that I have never experienced. She is made of other ingredients than I am, although she is like me in so many other ways. Last night's game was the first sporting event I have ever cared one bit about, and felt anything at all about the outcome. My daughter is a winner, but I've been telling you that for as long as I've been blogging.

I'm just an epic fail when it comes to being there to see it.

Like Columbus

There are so many things I've believed, in theory or with the occasional validation from the Universe. On some intellectual level I'll know some amazing thing to be true, while still having fear or doubts in my secret heart that I just have a love of whacky ideas.

The real power of intention to manifest people or things is on that list. Or the thought that when the student is ready the teacher will appear. Or that things are always perfect, even if I don't understand them as they are in the moment. I truly believe these statements, but if so, why do I ever feel any anxiety about the present or the future? I suppose that's what separates the human from the divine, just like having a body to house my soul keeps me grounded in a physical plane that is more limited than pure spirit.

Lately here though, I've been watching things click perfectly into place one after another. I find myself starting sentences with "Well there's no accident that ________ happened." Fill that in with "I met you." or "I have this and you need it." or any other thing that will sometimes look like things, people and situations are all of a sudden being pulled together like magnets. I'm sitting here searching for the right adjective to describe this time of my world, and falling short. Eerie? No. Strange? No. Cosmic? A word my Dad laughs at. What word would I use that encompasses both goose-bumps and that tingling feeling that starts at the base of my spine? I say I don't believe in coincidences, but then I looked it up and how can I not?

coincidence |k??ins?d?ns; -?dens|
noun
1 a remarkable concurrence of events or circumstances without apparent causal connection
2 correspondence in nature or in time of occurrence
3 Physics the presence of ionizing particles or other objects in two or more detectors simultaneously, or of two or more signals simultaneously in a circuit.

I have been saying a lot "Well, you asked, and the Universe is telling you yes." It's telling me yes a lot lately too, and maybe it's just that I've wallowed in no for too long and it feels abnormal?

I'll have a need for something to be done, and just the right person who is uniquely qualified to do it will show up, somehow needing just what I know how to do in return. We'll count and recount our dollars, and find them short of our requirements, and Michael will say "Each month we're somehow having enough." and somehow we do. That little side job or walk-in client will show up. We'll say "We really need to get to more meetings." and we'll have newcomers or other people with some time who need the same thing saying "maybe we could go to a meeting together?" or I'll find myself in a two hour discussion about recovery where it's really just a meeting without a format or readings from a text. I'll give instead of selling, and people come and pour their blessings on me like water on a hot rock; steam rising back up to join all the other water that is waiting to fall as rain somewhere else. There's just so much of it right now, and it's happening in my circle of loved ones like woven dream-catchers that have one string that appears to be many, all attached to the same hoop.

People I have known for years, even decades; people I recognized upon meeting, people I only know on the internet, all coming together in a square-dance of service, we're swinging our partners round and round. When so many examples of this principle in effect happening one upon the other just keep coming and coming it makes my head spin. I feel the way the smell of incense in a Catholic church has occasionally made me feel, like I'm breathing in God, and it smells good in a way that transcends a single sense. It's heady and intoxicating, It's vertigo and flight. It's life the way I've read about and heard taught by people I perceive as masters of intention and like watching an amazing juggler I just can't look away.

My personal economy, besides practicing my art for dollars, has become one of give and trade, or simply share. The word "blessing" is becoming a real noun and verb in my normal daily vocabulary. I started learning to use that word when I found recovery, but for the longest time I felt like I was masquerading as a Christian, which I am not. I talk about creating and manifesting, charms and enchantments like a Wiccan, which I am not either. Somehow I am both nothing at all and a part of every single thing.

Life right now feels much like a well-crafted stage-play. So many characters all interwoven and interacting with a plot that is both extremely clever and endlessly entertaining. Although I wish I could, there is no way I have the ability to write a story that is so elaborate and rich, while at the same time being simple and elegant. I guess that's why I wasn't given the job of being God in the first place, I'm too limited and simply not creative enough to spin a web as infinite and flawless as this one.

I walk one strand of it, and sometimes, like now, I rise up and up with my internal eyes and see the fabric of existence stretching infinitely in every direction. The most surprising thing from this occasional viewpoint is that it is not a plane, it ripples and waves and I can't see every bit of it. I also never see beyond the horizon, but like Columbus I have found that the line between sea and sky isn't an edge, and that no matter how far I travel it stays the same distance from my point of view.

I can see myself, with long white hair, healing myself and others with my hands that are not hands, seeing it with eyes that are not eyes but a place that is really somewhere behind the center of my forehead, where the spike of pain lives right now. Do I need that pain to hold me here in the now, and should I start to love it?

Without my frayed and dusty oh-so-heavy sack of anger and resentments to weigh me down and anchor me to the earth I find that I float far more often these days. What if in a moment of fascination for the bright light I just keep rising and the idea of returning to earth loses its appeal? What if up and outward are the only directions that will hold my attention and I just keep going? I see that sometimes, in my mind's eye, but since I'm not really the author of that I have no idea what is in the last chapter or on the final page.

Like Columbus I'll never really know until I sail off the edge of the world.

Submarine

My house reminds me of a submarine. Not in shape, size or function, but just in the way that there are many tiny spaces all alloted to different people and for different purposes. 6 people live here, and with one regularly visiting friend claiming sanctuary here often, and a family of four we keep inviting because they're ours now it's packed like an electronic device shipped from Japan, minus the styrofoam. Thank God we are never ordered to submerge, because without the fresh air from the windows I think I would suffocate even with sufficient oxygen. 6 people share one bathroom, one shower, one kitchen. Respect for common space is essential. Only one of us is still a kid, although she is allowed to learn to drive now, and does that well. She can drive but won't make a sandwich for herself and can't seem to cut her own cake or clean her own room. If her room were two thousand pounds of metal hurtling down the road and she drove like she lives in it there would be a path of death and destruction eight lanes wide.

So for the sake of the essay we'll say 6 adults in a house that legally has two bedrooms. Only two of us are concerned with maintaining the order and dare I say cleanliness of the ship. We are not ship shape. The rest of us use things, move things, make messes and leave derbis* everywhere.

Our current method of asking for change in the duty roster, change in the behaviors in common space does not work. It's not wrong, although sometimes it comes across as angry or frustrated (In Michael's case) or reasonable yet weak (in mine). We want people to change the way they live here, and we are met with resistance on all fronts. I don't know what will work, but I am intimately acquainted with what won't.

Before you give me some advice that uses concepts of "tough love" or "setting boundaries" or using ultimatum to achieve our goals, let me assure you that those are on the list of things that already don't work. More forcefulness, or negativity, or fully outlining exactly what the problem is and how simple common sense and manners are all it would take to correct our messy sub will not work. We are dealing with four very intelligent, willful, entitled and righteous adults who are used to the way things have been, and not being bothered with it, are completely content to carry on. One will make an excellent legal case for why their behavior is fine and no more should be asked of them. One will shut down and in their silence disappear into the environment much the way a chameleon will blend with whatever it sits on. One will get angry and pout and slam doors, and loudly declare that this is "fucking retarded." and one will argue and use logic to bait another into raising volume while losing efficiency through anger. All four are highly intelligent, did I mention that? They all know how to work their own brand of resistance to get through the moment of request and continue in the way that suits them.

We're the parents, which is like having a million dollars in Confederate paper money. We just can't spend that any more. We're the people who do what gets done to keep the machine well-oiled and running, patch the holes, keep it from sinking. We can call "Mayday!" all we want, but there is no one on the other end of the line. For the first time in my life, I am not the captain, I've promoted my husband to that rank, I am first mate, and I'm ok with that, if only here on the good ship Overpopulated. He is extremely frustrated, because while he can get a crew of ten to paint an entire apartment complex in an orderly and efficient way, he can't seem to get four people to wipe the counter after making a sandwich. Techniques that work with employees don't work with adult children living at home. We're going to talk to our beloved Dr. Kathy this morning, and I want to use all 55 minutes to get a new plan, something completely different that may work to change the way we all live here together. I plan to bring a legal pad and take notes, I am not above posting lists on the walls of my home if it comes to that. No kids, these aren't the star-charts for chores you had when you were little, this is the new operating procedure for this vessel and if we don't follow it we will sink from the weight of our disorder.


I wish it were the Good Ship Lolipop, or even Pequod but it's not. It's our leaky old ship that has been vastly improved in dry-dock lately. The crew is NOT going to be happy with the new directives, and while I'm sorry, I'm not sorry at all. We deserve to live in a nice orderly place, and that's what we will have.

Disclaimer:
The preceding 13 years of chaos have been created and fueled by me. I have never been a particularly orderly person, I'm an artist, and a writer, and live mostly in my own head. I do not say I want to return to some form of order I have ever accomplished in my own right, I say that I want something new, a vision that only Michael brought here with any ability to create. I have never met a person who is willing to work harder to make things nice, either inside or out. I have been guilty of mess-monster behavior myself, and really if I were honest I could divide our crew into five and one, not four and two. Honesty is the only currency I have to pay for my right to blog about anything at all. I have only recently joined the team for orderly behavior. Carry on.


We'll see what Kathy has to offer, and then like Monty Python we will come home and say "And now, for something completely different.

*My Grandmother's word, that's not a typo, it encompasses so much more than the more commonly used "debris"

Banquet

My life feels like a human buffet, with each dish so different and complete that you could make a meal from any one platter. Today is a banquet though, because many of the feelings and people I've been cooking in the word kitchen will all be served at the same time. I've been busy in the pantry, preparing all these relationships and writing down the recipes, and with feelings for condiment and relish I'm not sure I have a bolt of linen large enough for the table cloth. Plus there's presentation, and finding just the right plate or bowl; one thing I am certain of is that I have enough serving spoons, because Shayla let me keep them all when we went through my drawers and cupboards.

On today's menu:

My friend has a meeting at Project 90, the ninety day recovery program I've written about in other blogs. We spent the day and the evening together yesterday, and came to realize that in twenty years of friendship it was the first truly authentic time we've spent together, ever. We are both clean, we both want recovery, we both have just this one day at a time so in many ways we're at the same point in our journey. I have a few one days that add up to months and years, but we all really only have today. I know I'm getting up earliest today, so I will have the most sobriety. I won't brag about it though, the difference between 6:13 am and whenever the rest of my chosen family circle wakes up is not even worth mentioning in the scale of a whole lifetime.

It is an exercise in ego to try to decide that one needs recovery more than another, or who has a better chance at attaining the miracle. We're taught not to do it, but I think secretly we all have an interior betting window for this horse race. I saw my friend killing herself, and was fairly certain I was sending her off to the desert to die when she left for Vegas. I was on the phone with her for three hours the night she did a real and true first and second step, I've heard her voice change over the last month or so and saw her for the first time Friday, with clear eyes; she's lost the cadaverous look she had when she went into the sand and the heat and the madness that is Las Vegas; Hell on earth, at least for her. I did judge that she was worse off than almost anyone when she left, and now I have high hopes and this feeling of certainty in my heart that she is one of the lucky ones that will receive this gift of Grace and find the statistically improbable state of ongoing recovery. She's spending a lot of time with us while she waits and earns her spot in the program, because our life is safe and geared toward living that dream.

It's like a lifeboat- sure, it may capsize in life's waves any time, and there are only basic supplies aboard, but we're all in it together and we have enough for everyone while we wait for sight of land. I have no right to feel so certain that she's going to make it, and yet I really believe that she will, and I get to be there. Twenty years, and I have loved this woman every way two people can love each other, but yesterday was something completely different and most definitely beautiful, because we were both truly there. I'll see her before she goes, and after, if today she isn't whisked into residency and a seven day black-out from contact with the outside world. This is an appetizer for today's spiritual meal.

Another fantastic dish I'll be served is a possible visit from Christi.

One of my oldest and most valued friends brought her to me as a gift one day out of the blue. He is not my perfect mate, or meant to be with me in that way. I spent fifteen years thinking he was, so accepting this fact was like a ride in a hot air balloon. If life made sense he and I would have been born as siblings and shared our childhoods, which we did in a way, only in different places, and before we actually met. I see now how it was easy to confuse a love that deep and real and lasting with romantic love. It took Michael to show up and open my eyes to who my forever-mate is for me to see that all love that laces my landscape like diamond deposits and veins of gold is not romantic love. I love him though, like that, deep and mineral, and he brought me Christi. She is on the shelf with the most rare and valuable ingredients I cook with, next to the saffron and the white truffle oil, up there with Angelique and K, Holly and Shayla. The top shelf.

The time we spend together is segmented, sometimes we see each other all the time, and talk constantly on the phone, and others she is off on a great sea voyage where there is little contact with land. I never feel she's absent from me, even when she's far out on the ocean. She's in port currently and will come strolling in like a super-model with a heart like the Easter Bunny, her basket full of pretty and colorful gifts; she sometimes puts them straight into my hands, sometimes leaves them hidden for me to find later. She is another of those people that I have known forever, and recently become acquainted with again. We went to high school together, in different places before we actually met. Just Christi in a day can be something joyous and nutritious for my soul, but like a 3 am infomercial I'm compelled to say "But wait, there's more!" Christi is a meat and potatoes main dish, rich and filling even in small servings.

Shayla was absent from the shop yesterday, in order to attend a muffin named Clara's first birthday. She said she'd probably be in today, not to make up for anything, but because we both value our two days a week where we are together in this enterprise known as Flying Colors. Shayla is flowers on the table, in big gorgeous sprays of fragrant bloom. Time with her never fails to get me in touch with hope, and laughter, and the kind of instinctual love I had for each of my children the first time I saw their faces. In my perfect imaginary world she would be my daughter-in-law, and the mother of my grandchildren. She would be at every holiday, would have some ridiculous word for me and we would be best friends. Really, the only thing that's different from my real life here is that she didn't choose one of my sons to marry. In the very big picture that's a very small difference. Like a floral display she gives simply by being.

As if that were not enough, I have Jen coming for dessert. My long and complicated relationship with her could only be pulled off by the most expert pastry chef. One bump and the cake would have fallen. Over-whip cream and you have butter. Work the dough too long and it's tough, work it before it rises and your loaf is flat. Jen has been a recipe where timing was everything and finesse was crucial. I didn't know her at all. I've hated her. I've been petty and jealous and shown her my smallest, meanest person. I've laid my regret at her feet, only to have her pick it up and with some origami-magic fashion it into something beautiful. I started to like her, I'm finding that I grow to love her. Straight from the seventh grade science textbook, in a chapter called "Life Cycles." I know the least about her as a person, she's a gift that I've only torn the paper on, and seen enough to know that the box is very pretty. We're going to look at some damage that someone did to her artistically, and we've both loved and trusted that person only to find that the fruit was rotten at the core. I'll get to repair it, and that will stand as metaphor for repairing damage she and I have done to each other, much like we were both damaged by him.

She's young, and jumping on her kite tail this early in the game I'll get to ride along as she soars up and away into the land of amazing womanhood. The view from up there will be breathtaking and so high that you can see for miles, and I'm fortunate enough to get to share the scenery vicariously. She hasn't married her true love yet, so I'll get to see that whole thing too, and I just love me some wedding!

It's still Molly time on my clock, and she will be the server, the spice, the butterfly that sometimes stings. She will be mercurial and we'll never know from one minute to the next who this mutable Goddess of lightning change will be. She is the algebraic variable, the ever-exploding firework, the best surprise. I have told her that for years, that she is my best surprise, because she came to me unexpectedly when I felt least prepared to welcome her, and really, my life would never have turned out this well if she hadn't. Watching her become is more fascinating than seeing anything hatch or bloom, the only constant is that there's just no way to tell what's going to happen next.

In a perfect world I would invite Nadia to this table, just to complete a perfect feast. It would possibly be awkward for a minute, but she belongs. She is a different colored beverage in every glass, but this Moon-Woman-Cancerian is water, and we've all been so thirsty. Nadia is the Ace of Cups, and the liquid that spills from it as well. The time will come, when the clock hands spin a few more times; doesn't stop me from wishing, I get to wish whatever I want.

Nadia is the only one of these amazing and diverse women I've never written about, but the rest of this ensemble have all made their appearance in my word-world. She's private, she's a geode that contains all its gems on the inside and you have to be invited to see them sparkle. It has never felt right yet to put her on a page for all of you to see, she is a secret, she is coded language and I like to believe I have the key. Loving her as I do I'm sure she'll make an appearance at some point, in some way that won't trespass her love of privacy, only time will tell.

My feeling lever has been stuck on HIGH for a while, and I can't find the brakes on this train. Although I sometimes feel my tank is almost empty, I also feel like I could overflow at the same time.

Five unique and amazing women, all converging on the table that is my life, and an empty seat left for wishes to have their place at the banquet. I have been completely wrong to refer to myself as the Chef who created the feast, that is and always will be the Mighty Universe. I got to write the menu describing it though, and that's what I love to do anyway. This is my banquet of a day, and lest you think there is only one table in the room, I have actual paying clients (Thank you God for my prosperity) who will be joining us as well, although with separate seating.

The most exciting and terrifying part of my entire life is that I have no idea what will happen next at any given time. This is why I have to hand-write the menu every day.

Yesterday was a holiday I think is only celebrated in our house, it's called Eye of the Storm. It's the day between Paul and Andrew's birthdays, July 31. It's the day of Ninja Turtle and face painting birthday parties, with guests that are both two and four, eight and ten, or any other two-year-apart demographic. It's a day of great excitement and resentment rolled into one. Paul is the oldest, born first; yet always doomed to wait an extra day for his birthday party. Andrew, the youngest always got his birthday party a day early. At 25 Paul can still give an impassioned speech about how unfair this is. As a parent of two small boys born in this configuration, Eye of the Storm was the only logical way to handle this. In their older years we don't have balloons and dinosaurs any more, but we do mention it, and it is still celebrated with bragging and hangovers.

Andrew was my second-born, my second planned home-birth. I had already done it once and thought I knew just what to expect from birth: Bearable contractions, a gathering of friends at the house to wait it out and make food for the celebration that happens right after I'm done working and have a shower. Paul was coming up on two years old, and very verbal and savvy enough to know what was going on, and until he actually had a baby in the house he was very excited about it. It was totally planned that he would be in the bed with us as his new baby came, and be a total part of our family growing. We were kind of save-the-world hippies and it was a communal birth I had envisioned, and in the long run actually had, although that was about the only part of the experience that went as planned.

Although Andrew was my biggest baby (8 pounds 4 ounces) I only gained 14 pounds total during my pregnancy. No chemo patient has thrown up any more in a day, every single day for 40 weeks than I did with Andrew, or all three pregnancies if I tell about them as a group. I never once ate a meal that I didn't go throw up halfway through and come back to see if I could eat some more. In the interest of my male readers I won't make a list of all the things that were in there with all 8 pounds and 4 ounces of him, but it accounts for all but a pound or two of the weight I gained. Jim used to say that I made him out of myself, that I simply sprouted or cloned.

Some facts about his birth that can be mentioned quickly and are relevant are: He was born 17 days after his due date. He was due on a day in the sign of Cancer with Scorpio Moon, and was actually born on a day in Leo with a Gemini moon, which reflects an entirely different personality to say the least. I went into labor in the wee hours of Monday morning, and stayed there until Friday a little after noon. I was in labor, real labor for five days with Andrew. Paul's birthday was on Wednesday of that week, and I thought I was going to have two children with the same birthday. I walked the halls of the South Coast Plaza mall on each of those five days, trying to speed things up, stopping to hold my belly and breathe while window-shopping. I also broke down in the car I was riding home in, on the day of his birth. I was with a friend that time so it wasn't quite as traumatic and I didn't have to walk for the phone myself, but somehow the labor I had with both boys was enough to cause malfunction in two different cars.

So Monday, the first day of labor everyone gathered at our apartment for the joyous arrival. And we waited. This was my second birth, and those are usually a little faster if not easier. Midwife and all my friends gathered around, talking and joking and keeping vigil with me while I waited for him to get here. By late that night my midwife said "I don't think it's going to be today after all, I'll come by in the morning to check on you, call me if anything changes in the middle of the night."

Tuesday was the same. Wednesday was Paul's second birthday, his party that year was all grownups, counting contractions, talking and joking and still keeping vigil. I'm sure he got presents that year, but that particular birthday for me is kind of hazy. All day I told him I was going to give him a baby for his birthday.

By Thursday only Kelly's mom Lynne, my friend Leslie and the midwife were there with me, everyone else was worn out from the 3-5 minute contraction counting party I had been having since the beginning of the week. They all said "Call me when this baby is actually coming, ok?" I had stayed a steady 2 cm the whole time (a statement that once again in the interest of my male readers' comfort I won't elaborate on) Everyone seemed to think that this baby would never actually be born, and I was becoming prone to fits of crying, declaring that I would just be pregnant forever and I was really ready to be done.

Friday morning came, and I was still right where I had been on Monday when the birth party started. Paul was restless and cranky, he had been THE kid for two years and the allure of this new baby he had been promised forever ago had totally worn off. He had his nap early that day, mostly because he was manic and driving everyone crazy. I was alone in the house with Leslie at around eleven, and all of a sudden it dawned on me that I really wanted to push. "Les? I really want to push, like now." This was before she became a registered nurse, and before she had done her own second home-birth and felt like an old-hand at it.

"Wait though, we have to get Jim and the midwife here!" a little panic around the edges of her voice. She hopped on the phone to get those two crucial players on the scene, went next door to get Lynne, checked on Paul who was still asleep. "No, but really, I want to push!"

People started arriving, and in the quick check the midwife did she said "You're ten! You can go any time, let me break this bulging water for you." I had been on my hands and knees and felt like I wanted to deliver like that, but my surgery knee was hurting so I flopped onto my back and made much the same sound a man ripping a tree stump out of the ground with no help might make. Two pushes and there was Andrew, MY baby. Five days of labor, then two to ten and done in about one hour, if you count the part where I wanted to push but was trying not to because I had no midwife and Paul was sleeping in the next room.

Paul woke up eventually, and came scuffing into the room to meet his brother. He slept through it, and maybe thought that someone brought him over and left him there. He was a cool baby, sure, but when were they going to come and pick it up again so he could be the center of attention like he was supposed to be?

We had chosen the name Scott Everett if he was a boy, the middle names of both his grandfathers. That was his name for about three hours, until we realized that it just wasn't his name. Maybe Scott Everett was that baby who would've been born as a Cancer with the Moon in Scorpio, I don't know. Paul called him simply "That baby" which was his title till he was a year old or so. "Hi Scott! Little Scotty! Scotty Dog!" we tried them all out, and were perplexed to realize that the name was nowhere close to who he was. "What name are you getting for him?" "It's weird, and I know we didn't like it because it has a nickname, but I'm getting Andrew for some reason." "That is so weird, that's the name I see too!" In the middle of his arrival party he became Andrew James, his real name.

The one off camera character who was there almost 24/7 for the whole week was Mary Jean. She was in the kitchen cooking. By the time I had my post-birth shower (a tradition I have kept even in the hospital for Molly's birth, the only one that took place in an official location, much to the dismay and displeasure of all those nurses) and came out to the couch to join my friends for the birth party and some food (which I was beyond hungry for) my Big Daddy was arriving; Armed with his flowers and his amazement at how I go about the business of birth; his watering eyes (not crying, just watering, allergies at this time of year you know) to meet his second grandson, the baby his baby had just brought forth. We had a lovely party that everyone but Paul loved and was entranced with. As I remember someone brought him a present for the birth, scant recompense for that birthday party that didn't really happen, and in no way making up for "that baby" hogging all the attention.

He looked just like me. He still looks quite a bit like me. He is left-handed like me, and shares my love of deep and mystical thought. Where Paul had an immediate preference for his dad, this was MY baby. I think I held him for the first two years of his life. "That Baby" was bigger at birth, and is still bigger today than his brother. He's gone farther and seen more places in the world than anyone else in his family. He is just about the only person who can outsmart me, or best me intellectually. I've already written a whole blog about who he is today,
http://ta2lady.livejournal.com/15593.html
so I won't go very far into that here, this is not the department of redundancy department after all.

Happy Birthday Andrew, Dundy (the way he insisted his name was really spelled for quite a while) my son, "That Baby", the most amazing man I may ever know. I love you all the way to Kmart!