Picking Up the Pieces

Some things are just so pretty. Aren't they?I bought this teacup for 20 cents at a thrift store about a year ago. Often, I had my morning coffee from it before work, admiring the size, the form, the violets, the way the light came through it, the way it fit perfectly in my hand, and how the gold rim inside, helped me feel a little important.

A month or so ago, it was precisely this admiration for this cup that prompted me to take its photo, perched, ever so perfectly on my tiny green table. Me being clumsy and all things impermanent, I thought, I might like to have a picture of it when it was gone. Maybe, I told myself, so as not to feel silly taking a picture of a cup, that I would some day learn to paint with watercolor and this might be my first subject.

Of course the cup broke; a casualty the other day, of the heavy tray from the grandbaby's highchair slipping off the counter and taking the cup with it. True to its image, it kept its dignity and didn't make a scene or even cry out when it broke. I was surprised to find it on the floor under the tray, in pretty pieces.

I saved the fragments of violets, where the cup one day, if I ever get the time, might find new life on a mosaic table top, or even as a pendent when I get better at my jewelry making. In fact it will give me more incentive to return to the creative things I love. When something is lost, something is found - I used to parrot this a lot once upon a time.  But the older I get, the more I get to live it, through monumental matters and in miniscule lessons, like the shattering of a perfect violet cup.

You Are Here

Today, I played connect the dots

with my age spots

Joking about finding

mystical direction,

the answer to

"where do I go from here?"

I laughed
but I did 
almost hope 

that some sign
would take shape,

a symbol, a word, an abbreviation, at least.

But all that showed up

was a map

of where I've been

and it stopped right at today,

"You Are Here"

marked the last spot

So here I am

an older woman

who has just

drawn on her hand.

But I knew
enough
not to use

a Sharpie.

If I've learned

anything in

these
fifty-five years

it's that

not one thing

is permanent

Babies Grow Up

 

 All around the house, scatter pieces of your dream come true. Photos clipped carefully from magazines of hairstyles and shoes and flowers. I see now how this dream sustained you these past two years, while you endured it here, in this temporary place with your mommy, this place that you had long outgrown. But you endured lovingly, so gracefully - bringing home tea and Diet Pepsi and butterfly mugs to make the sipping special.  I'm drinking my morning coffee out of the blue one; I always tried to give you the pink one when I poured yours, did you know that? Still giving you the pink cup, 25 years nonstop. How I love you, my little girl, all grown up. It is your time, Bird, finally, your turn. I look at all the spaces where your things are propped up waiting for you to take them. You deserve your own space. Your own alters. 

  The day after your wedding, I felt so tender, sore all around my heart that at the same time leaped with joy for the two of you. I have a friend who cannot understand, how I could feel anything but pure happiness, but it's ok, I know I am allowed to feel a little sad. We humans are complex creatures and life is rarely all or nothing. I will miss you so much, but oh how much light you and your big, loving, laughing man give off. How you belong together.  

It's a familiar feeling I have right now. Much like those early days after I gave birth to you. Feeling so very feminine, with a tender, secret ache.  Bliss was tempered with the ending of having you all to myself - knowing that I had to share you with the rest of the world, and knowing that the rest of the world didn't, couldn't ever love you as much as I do.  But guess what, Bird?  I think your laughing man might, I think he just might, and there is immeasurable relief in that.  I gave you away when you said, " I do" on a perfect day at water's edge. But your happiness, your happiness was worth it.

I am thinking now of all the times you helped me when I was too tired to stand. All the times you came through the door at the end of a long day, happy for the meals I made, and smiling, just about always smiling. And each time I knew, I always knew, I wouldn't have that forever. Today, wonder of wonders, miracle of miracles,  I know that I am able to open my heart and let you go. Really truly, gladly, let you go. Because, sparkly one- in -the -middle, that's how much I love you.

Moonbeams

    As I dragged the trash out the other night, feeling very sorry for myself, I looked up and caught a fat, round moon laughing. 

     "So full of yourself," I snapped.

     "So fill yourself up; Who's stopping you?," He quipped, shimmering for a fight.

     I stared up at His Brightness with no come-back at all. The moon gloated in his cleverness. 

     I laughed at the absurdity of it all . Then, with the moon as my partner, a fifty-five year old woman danced by the dumpsters.

No Peeps This Year

                                                         
                                                                
     Another first here in the land of downsizing and downsizing and downsizing. No egghunts, no Easter baskets awaiting "the kiddies."  Friends have rolled their eyes at me for years because I still make my grown-up girls Easter baskets. But the truth is I love chicks and bunnies and flower seeds and flip flops and bubble gum and these always ended up in the baskets. Not to mention, I am extremely fond of the shape of eggs, simplicity at its finest, and brightly colored eggs are so easy on the eyes, aren't they? Not much to discern, interpret or understand.

     Easter baskets and the hunts that accompanied them, with eggs that used to be filled with quarters and chenille chicks and then later dollar bills and little nail polish bottles and lip gloss are now officially a thing of the past. I miss them. It has always been such fun, and it was a way to welcome Spring which meant that my favorite season,  summertime, was not all that far away. 

     So I guess it's goodbye to vinegar and egg dye on our fingers because everyone is too busy; good-bye to Peeps because everyone is watching their weight.  I guess in the morn it will be just me alone singing Eggbert the Easter Egg... Does anyone else in the world remember that song? I used to play it on a bright yellow thick vinyl record - a "78"  I think it was. And if you are old enough to remember these, then you are old enough to sing with me.  

     Please indulge a wrinkled girl, who is pining for Peeps and the blast of hyacinths in the air. This one has little hand gestures and faces that go with it. Ready? 

"Bunny Bunny Bunny You're so Funny, with your twitching nose...Bunny Bunny Bunny you're so funny from your head to your toes. Oh you pretty bunny may I come near? May I hold you and pet your ear? Oh you pretty bunny, I love you so. Stay with me, oh please don't go..."

Who Do You Shout at Now?

Once in awhile someone will ask if we still talk, " Oh no", I tell them and they shake their heads in disbelief. But in truth, I do still, from time to time, talk to you from afar. I look at the Gumbygirl and ask you if you can comprehend what you are missing. That the similarities between the little one and her mother would be enough to break your heart, if you knew. But then I wonder, not it a flippant or sarcastic way, if you still have a heart to break.

I watched the oldest going off to work today, ponytail, swinging just so. She looked so much like her third grade self, only twenty years later and today, instead of backpack, she carried her lunch and nursing shoes and a secret new life, growing inside her. This is something I would have told you when I handed you your dinner, I would have said," Hon, you should have seen her today, so mature, so beautiful as she walked away. But you know what? I could still see exactly her eight year old self too." And you might not have looked up from your over-buttered potato; you probably would not have. You would not have taken your eyes off TV, that I know for certain. Such a cliche our lives were.

The days are closing in when the youngest and I will have no place of our own. I will not have a nest for the others and their families to visit. I know how happy that will make you, because it is after all, all I have, their visits to my hearth, their fingerprints on my heart. But the fingerprints are mine to keep.

I finally found a place willing to give me a job. Take a chance on an oldie out of the workforce for too long. Couple the bad economy with no experience and add my liver spots and gray hair apparent, and it isn't a surprise that I have to be grateful to have even this. You would mock it. Shake your head in disgust and say, "That's God damn ridiculous. A sixteen year old can make more than that at McDonalds." I imagine myself now, the new me, snapping back. " Do you think I would choose to make so little?"

 I am not very good with math, this we both know, but I do know enough to understand that something is better than nothing. At this place, I am paid in praise, it is really true that the amount I earn could not keep a bird alive. That's my moms expression, do you remember? Of course you do not. There isn't room in your new life for clutter like that. 

But this job gives me a place to go, where someone expects me to show up and counts on me to fax and file, fax and file. I might learn something here, in ways I can't predict. And I will tell you a secret, how I get happily through the monotony of each day.  I tell myself, "with each file you move a fraction of an inch away from him, and that much closer to the life you were meant to have." And it helps some, it really does.  

If an old acquaintance asks if we talk, I say no, not at all, and they might shake their heads at 34 years, all meaningless. I just press my lips together in acceptance.  I don't tell them that from time to time I still talk to the space you left, or that the time between conversations grows steadily, blessedly, ever longer.

It's Only Hardware

      

Worn smooth by all of us, coming home and leaving, coming home, leaving. Now, none of us cross this threshold any more to infuse the old house with laughter, reunited. I was tempted to take the doorknob with us, but it would have been disrespectful, wrong. 

So instead, I have this photo to remind me of bringing babies home for the first time, of little ones on tiptoe- opening that door with two hands, of teenagers letting it slam, of my mom and dad, visiting. That doorknob turned in trust and expectation, opening and closing our years.  To hold it was to hold home in my hand. Looking at it now - I see a blessed piece of hardware, I see the past and inevitable change, and I can see without a doubt, the patina of my heart.

               

      

Alive on Wednesday Morning

The morning, still dark, is enchanting.  It is 6:00 AM. I walked both my girls to their cars in the velvety mild of this wondrously warm January day.  There is something in the air, great happenings soon, both heart breaking and beautiful. I can feel it on my skin, I can hear a sweet mummer, close by. 

My muscles are alive with tender care given.  Yesterday I watched my Gumbygirl, grandbaby for about thirteen hours.  It is blessed time spent. It is also exhausting, as I swoop her in the air, wrestle when it comes time to change, crawl into play huts, push a toddler car and generally police everything that is a hazard to a 16 month old. And everything is a hazard. A fork is a deadly weapon. I hear the Jaws theme when I spy a Chapstick cap on the floor, diving for the choking hazard that she is drawn to like moth to flame. She is so quick. Leaving for a walk to soak up some of that glorious sun yesterday, we were met with a ten inch patch of snow, hanging on right outside the apartment door. "Ooooh!", the Gumbygirl said, eyeing the slush up like Hawaiian Ice.       " Snow!" I said, slipping my key into my pocket. In a micro second,  with one turbo swoop, she had a mouthful of the bedraggled stuff.  "Mmmmmm!"she said, brown eyes shining, shredded mulch hanging out her mouth, dirt smeared up her cheek, into her eyebrow.

When she leaves I am still in mode, still scanning, still on alert for a good two hours. These old bones are tired. But for some reason I just had to make my dad his favorite cornbread and rice pudding before I sat down. I knew I would be seeing him today; He is 88 and it's a small thing I can do for him. Moving out of my house had been so draining; and with this apartment kitchen, being all but nonexistent, I had sorely neglected him these past few months. As the cornbread baked and as I stirred the rice pudding, I called my mom to check in, like I do every night.  Usually when I ask how they are, I  hear, "Great, we're both fine." But last night's, response was, "Not so good."

It seems as though my dad's bones have worn away. Either disintegrating or cracking, or maybe worse, and he has extreme hip pain, has been in extreme pain, which he did not want to worry anyone with. I swear this big Marine of a man, is, among other reasons, staying alive so he can be certain that I am back on my feet. But this big Marine of a man is literally falling apart and even he cannot stop it.  It is happening, I know it is happening and although I looked the other way in the demise of my marriage, I will not turn away this time. I will find a way to see the sacred in this impending loss.  I will find a way to be of use to my dad, the only man, that may have ever loved me.

Incubating also, is the marriage of my daughter. The middle one: A chirpy bird of a girl. Happy, giving, a love- bug from day one. She is marrying a good man. If I personally had scoured the planet for her I could not have handpicked a more generous soul. 

Beginnings and endings are vibrating all around us. Molecules of each swirling all about, colliding, embracing. My dad is to give my daughter away at her wedding in a few months. All of us pray that he will be able to do that, and if he can will himself to do it, he will and if it is God's will that it does not happen, we will find a way to accept that too. 

If I perch and picture the rest of my life unfolding there is no doubt at all that it will continue to be punctuated with great loss, just like the rest of humanity's.  Up until a few years ago,  sorrow had not stopped that often at my door.  I am so very aware that I will come to know sorrow intimately from here on in. I will have to befriend her to survive, inviting her to tea with my good friends Grace and Love.  We will each drink from old china cups, each with a different pattern, hopefully mine will have sweet peas, or maybe forget -me- nots. All the cups will have a hairline crack or a smooth chip or two. We will sip our tea, looking over our steaming cups at each other- Sorrow, Grace, Love and me. We will see that we are each beautiful and here for one another.