Dumpster Rat Has Nothing On Me

I have been making trips to the dumpster, throwing out - all through the night. The air is so warm and thick, it feels like velvet. It gives a false sense of safety, out here alone in a parking lot at 2:00 AM.

I carry a box, stuffed with a feather bed that has, at one time or another, kept all of us warm. Inside the box are photos, old, that no one wants. There too, are the three small pillows, hand sewn and embroidered with each of my girls' names. There is the big pot that offered batch after batch of vegetable soup, always eagerly received; and cup cake pans that once held ladybug treats for a classroom of first- graders.

I drop it all in the dumpster, the noise of the pot and pans, muffled by photos, feather

bed and tiny pillows. The history of my life, in a nondescript clankety- clank. I am dizzy from the heat, dizzy from fatigue, heartache.

I wobble a little, backward and look down, seeing that I have stepped on a stripped ear of corn. I think of the rat that had been dining before I interrupted.

 
"Is this your home?" I whisper into the dumpster where I know she is hiding, corn in her teeth.

There is a soft rustle, a burrowing down. Her answer. I imagine she has lived here all her life. And her mother before that and her mother before that...

"Lucky you," I tell the rat, meaning it.

I walk across the courtyard up the stairs, jealous of a rat, unseen. 

I curl up on the floor of my apartment, furniture all gone, knowing it is one of my last nights here. I am out of tears.

 I steer my thinking away from a decrepit car and a nowhere job. I let my mind wrap around my family, all that I have. I think of my parents, ancient and wonderful.  I see my dad's face, handsome still at 88, pride etched in every crease. I see my mom, and the softness in her gray eyes. My girls' bright smiles, sparkle at me, as if in a dream, but I know I am still awake; sleep doesn't come this easy. I reach for them and their genuine devotion. My grandbaby scampers by in these thoughts, wearing that look, that shows she knows it is her divine right to be adored. 

I am so tired. I find the thin blanket on the floor next to me. I pull it up to my shoulders, tuck it under my chin. It is familiar and welcoming and comfortable, like love itself. It is where I live. I have lived in love my entire life. Lucky me, so very lucky me. I rest my head on the one pillow that hasn't yet hit the dumpster. It is so soft; it cradles my head, like I am somebody.

just a whisper

in the morning hush
the seed cracks ever slightly
sprouting hope today

Prayer in a Night Wind

flicker flames of candles near 

dance out heartache, fend off fear

speak to me, through the trees

whirl through limbs, rustle leaves 

bend branches down to reach me

teach me faith, teach me, teach me

carry courage to my skin

wave my hair, lift my chin

dry all tears from my face

call me, pull me

take me home

promise lightness

to my bones

show me how

tell me now

speak to me 

through the trees

sing me answers

in a breeze

        

                                  

Talking to Tomatoes

There you are. Just one tiny tomato, dangling. Yellow-green, firm and adorable. Like a child, knowing only now - you swing in morning breezes. Bird songs echo. Morning light bathes and all is right in your little tomato world. 

You assume water will come and sun will shine and are oblivious of bad bugs that for now, are busy elsewhere.

Tomato baby, it isn't courage at all that empowers you to grow.  It's just trust, isn't it? Faith, that you will be, all that you are meant to be. 

                           

Resolution '12

I want to be a thin woman
who goes to church.
Believes what she sings.
every note clean, clear
affirmation
no doubt
at all
catches in
her throat.
What stops me?

I want to be a woman
earning enough to cushion
steps of her
beloved three.
Ease burdens, erase debts,
fix a car, clear up skin,
cut and color hair.
What stops me?


I want to taste the ocean deep,
have it cling, crisp my hair,
feel  waves roar, rumble
wild in veins
widened in wonder
breathing deep, abandon blue

What don't I?

I want love to know
no bounds.
Abundant so, it wraps
around  family,
my own, tenfold
seeping out home cracks
 into streets
settling on strangers,
just a fingerprint
of good.
What keeps me?

The wind beats sense
into morning, dark
I await answers.
Wind chimes oblige,
always polite,
Today's urge, gentle.
R e l e a s e
your fear, familiar.
Come, crawl
toward mystery,
coaxes now the day, dawning.
Darling one, it whispers, firmly.
Get out of your own way.

In Celebration of Flies in Late December

When my toddler grandbaby girl leaves after a long day of visiting, my back aches, yes, but so do my arms and not from holding her. The minute she and her mom, my beautiful first born,  drive off - my arms are painfully empty; they already ache to hold her. These arms have had the privilege of holding her throughout the day, whether she is marveling at planes overhead, sucking on a bottle or listening to books by the bushel. 

I think back over our day as they pull  away and I find myself standing alone in the parking lot, smiling like a fool. Who else on this planet would I stand with (for a full ten minutes) watching flies crawl on daisy- mums in late December? I still hear the emotion in her tiny voice, both repulsed and over-joyed, "ewww, eww, ewwww!" It is impossible to worry about such things as never-ending divorce issues when I am in the midst of moments like that. Such is the power of 25 pounds of innocent energy.  

It takes me at least a half hour when I come back into my apartment to stop looking for her. I startle every few minutes, afraid that she might be tugging on electrical cords, or tasting pennies or reaching to pull the laptop off the table. It is a decidedly lonelier place when she leaves. 

 We gathered pine cones today and wrapped up little presents for her mom and dad.  These are bedraggled, sticky, and perfect. I think how happily my heart beats now that she is in the world - a stubborn little girl who has come to us out of the blue because my girls and I all needed her to be here. God sent us re-enforcement, adding another link to this small circle of broken- hearted women. A mighty link, brand new and in love with this world, a world where pine cones are really truly treasures and flies are still abuzz with wonder.

Life is Like a Bar of Soap

My high school friend told me about this gift that she bought the other day at a card store: soap with currency hidden inside. She paid fifteen dollars apiece for these with the hopes that inside might lie a twenty or fifty, or maybe even a hundred dollar bill. Of course it could be much less than this, but she was willing to take the risk.

I think my friend bought these not for the chance to "win" although there is the lure of gambling here. What I believe she was buying was a little slice of anticipation.  Waiting for something with hopeful imagining sure is fun, and we never outgrow it. 

These soaps immediately reminded me of something long forgotten from my childhood. There were little soaps, called Fuzzy Wuzzies or something like that, because they were in animal shapes that actually took on a furry quality as you used them. And the best part, the best part, was that when you washed them away, you were left with a little surprise charm in your hands.  These little darlings sure prompted a lot of hand washing back in those days -they were so much fun to use and the more I used them, the quicker I got to my prize. One time, it was a tiny dolly, or maybe a little heart charm. But there were booby prizes too, at least for me, like the time I washed and washed with my little blue bear only to find a plastic bullet in his tummy. Why would anyone want that, I wondered at the age of five. I wonder still. But it did not deter me from loving those soaps and eagerly receiving them. I used each bar with gusto.


So of course, the armchair philosopher that I am got to thinking about why we don't hold onto those wonderful feelings of expectation as we get older. Well, not why. I know why. It's because life beats us up along the way and we begin cowering and covering up to avoid the next slap.  But, remember back to the days when your biggest worry (if you were fortunate enough to have a good childhood) was whether or not your best friend could come out and play? Or the biggest disappoint was a plastic bullet in your bear- shaped soap?

The trick to it all of course, now, is holding onto that sense of anticipation, knowing full well that sometimes you are going to get  kicked, trampled and crushed by life.  And that is a pretty tough task for any of us.

But we all know people who can do it.  The cheerfully optimistic, who are so good at it that it is a way of life.  They greet each day, palms open, ready to receive what is hidden in the day for them, with humor, grace and hopefulness; And maybe even stifled giggles and squirms - such is the degree of anticipation they hold for life. They are the lucky ones. So far, I can only muster those feelings in short spurts and usually they are directly related to present circumstances. But I am working on this. Oh yes I am. Because I want to greet each day with hope and gratitude, because well, isn't that the nice way to receive a present, and after all every day is a gift, isn't it?

When I was young and just married, I approached my everyday life like this. I was with the man/child that I loved. We had our whole lives to look forward to and all the possibilities that that entailed. A home, children, holidays, vacations, great meals and laughter and hugs all around.  And life did bring me those things.  Plenty of those things. And each day as I got up and washed my hands and did all the normal things we do, it became clearer that he wasn't quite what I had expected. But I kept my booby prize, because he was mine, and I built my life around him, he was my family and I had promised to love him forever. I didn't see the other crappy prize of betrayal that was still hidden, but it was in time revealed, as are all of life's surprises. But that was the chance I took by saying, " I do." Would I take that chance again with someone else? Probably not. At least not the way I feel right now. 


But I am still going to take a chance on life.  Because in cowering, you forget to look up and if you don't look up you might not see the good prizes; a day with your granddaughter, the admiration of your children, a new friend walking toward you...

So, life I guess is like those bars of treasure soap.  You get the soap you choose and you get surprises hidden in there too.  Some surprises are obviously very, very bad, way worse than a plastic bullet and some are so wonderful that we ask ourselves what we ever did to deserve such abundance.  I think today, I might try to cower a little less; I have already been kicked around pretty good, although I am keenly aware how much worse it could get. Still, right this minute on this beautiful Sunday morning, I am going to open up these palms for my soapy, sudsy wonderful life. I am going to giggle, damn it, and maybe even squirm with the excitement and anticipation of it all. There is so much to be embraced and now that I am alone, there is one less obstacle in my way.

On Gumballs, Divorce, Hair Dye and Resilience - the Complexity of Being a Wrinkled Girl

I am the one nobody notices, strolling along water's edge at the Jersey Shore in July.  I am a  body of energy at the mall on Black Friday, walked passed and bumped into, but never seen. I am the woman the Verizon guy can absolutely see straight through. I am invisible. I am that fifty- something lady.  

But here is a secret the beach-goers, the shoppers and the cable man will never know: There among them is a woman who is every age that she ever was. For I am the six year old who loves the bright color and clank of gumballs.  I'm the teen who dances, alone in her room. I'm the twenty- two year old who works at being mysterious and the thirty year old longing for a man's hands to hold her "like a bunch of flowers".*  I am the forty-eight year old who dyes away fear with a box of  Loreal hair color. I am the fifty- four year old still standing after the cataclysmic collapse of a 29 year marriage. I am invincible (my spirit at least).  I am a wrinkled girl.

 I am not speaking multiple personality here - nothing that scary. But who I was, once- upon- a- time, is still right here with me, filtering life through all those precious perspectives. Some women are not so lucky, and lose touch with "their girl", the separation making them brittle and stiff -lipped, and well,  just old. How wonderful if each one of us could, at will, summon up that girl again, and twirl with her on a summer's night, squealing over sparklers and lightening bugs alike.

I am so grateful that "the girl " who started my journey, has stayed by my side all these many years. And oh how the years have added up! I have tried again and again to savor it all, to make the great stages of life last. But no matter how closely I paid attention, no matter how hard I tried to hold onto time, it has melted away like cotton candy in a clenched fist.  I have only recently come to accept that there is not one thing I can do about it.  So, I'm loosening my grasp, and in sweet surrender,  I open up my hands - the very hands that played jax with my sister, and embroidered my "dungarees", the same hands that accepted the promise of forever in a wedding band, the same hands that tenderly tickled my babies, the hands that have now gone spotty, taking on an odd, reptilian quality.
 

But it is with these hands, these blessed reptilian hands, that I intend to blog my fifty-something heart out. We women of  "a certain age" are so much more complex than any  outward appearance reveals. I want to shine some light on this in a personal way, illuminating the everyday, reflecting on the bittersweet wonder of it all.
 

For someone who has never been talkative by nature, I am beginning to realize that there is much to say. So, for all the wrinkled girls and the wrinkled girls yet to be, that happen upon this space,  I'm sharing some insight, and eagerly awaiting yours - because we are never too old to learn or be inspired by one another.  And for any man who loves a wrinkled girl, or someday might, I hope that by offering a glimpse of my heart,  you will be inclined to hold hers, all the more gently.  





 


* Carly Simon -The Right Thing To Do  http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jypWPiDyqP8&feature=related