transparent

It is hard to believe but these days weeks go by before I have time to go to my Goog.le Reader to sift through the blogs. I probably am subscribed to too many.

Probably the period of my life when I read blogs the most was the months after Ferdinand died. Words spewed out of me, and I read like crazy. I needed to share my grief and to share in others’ grief.

That need is much less intense now.

My grief is more transparent now. Hard to discern, unless you have exceptional ears when hearing my heartbeat.

I do not miss him less, nor love him less. But is is harder to write and talk about him.

Life pulls in all directions.

But in the center is my mother’s heart, sore and tender.

::

I hope you have been keeping well, and that 2011 had been kind to you so far. I hope to be catching up with you real soon.

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wrapping up the challenge

More than a week had passed since the new year, it’s time to finish up the last prompt for the Reverb 10 Challenge. I thought it had been a good exercise, and grateful for this opportunity to review and ponder. Looking forward to doing it again for 2011!

Day 31: Core story. What central story is at the core of you, and how do you share it with the world? (Bonus: Consider your reflections from this month. Look through them to discover a thread you may not have noticed until today.)

The truth is, I know I carry a lot of fear and self-doubt in me. That actually makes up a big part of my core. I often feel I am just not good enough and will never achieve, and feel afraid to put myself out there.  I feel I am coming to face this and slowly coming out of my shell and beginning to find the courage to try to achieve things, determined to learn from the process and see it as a journey versus regarding the arrival at the destination as a success.

Ferdinand’s death shook my sense of security for this world. In a way it’s good because I live with my eyes wide open these days.

I always felt becoming a mother gave me a second life. I re-considered many things and saw the world with new eyes. For that I am eternally grateful. Through my children I could re-experience what it must have felt like to be a baby, to be held, to be carried around, cuddled, hugged, loved, and sometimes, judged (which I try not to do with my own children). It made me re-evaluate my choices and the way I do things.

Then Ferdinand died, and I had to find a way to face life again, find new feet and walk the earth differently, again. The world did not change, but I did.

Now we have Lyra, but we also lost another pregnancy. I keep having to re-evaluate and re-think and re-set. I guess that is my true core story. I always felt “this is it” and then something comes along and I need to re-think all over again and start anew again. My life is moment by moment, it had always been.

::

The Thing Is

to love life, to love it even

when you have no stomach for it

and everything you’ve held dear

crumbles like burnt paper in your hands,

your throat filled with the silt of it.

When grief sits with you, its tropical heat

thickening the air, heavy as water

more fit for gills than lungs;

when grief weights you like your own flesh

only more of it, an obesity of grief,

you think, How can a body withstand this?

Then you hold life like a face

between your palms, a plain face,

no charming smile, no violet eyes,

and you say, yes, I will take you

I will love you, again. –– Ellen Bass 

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my dream and my fear

I do not normally dream, but I had one, two nights ago.

In the dream I saw Lyra cycling into the river, she was about as old as she is now, maybe slightly older. I watched in shock and then I saw R jumping into the river, yelling that he was going to get her. In my mind’s eye I saw her sinking like a rock right to the bottom.

I turned and ran. I was screaming but no sound came from me. I was running to find towels. Why? I had no idea.

I found towels and I ran back, thinking, “She is dead. She is dead.”

And then I woke up. I could not believe I had such a dream. She turns two this Sunday, it almost seem like an omen, a bad one. I willed myself back to sleep, wanting to know what happened afterwards in the dream. Did R get her in time? Or did the thing I fear happened?

I could not shake it off. I told R the following morning and he tried to brush it off, saying it’s a common parenting fear and it just manifested in my dream. I wondered if Life was trying to warn me to be more vigilant, or to be ready for cruelty.

How I wish I could go back and erase the dream. For I could not convince myself that it was the brain getting confused and playing tricks. It did not feel like a random thing to me and I just could not shrug it off as my latent fear and nothing more.

She will be two this Sunday. I plan to make her a tall, colorful cake. And I intend to bake her a cake each and every year, until she is sick of my cakes.

Please, let me bake her a cake every year, until I die.

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