Settling In Gently

My kids are getting big. I have evidence for this: today, I decided to make a pot of tea, put some cookies on a plate, and read a book. I got all cozy on the broken (comfiest) part of the couch, put a quilt on my lap, and started to read. And, like cats, the kids quietly gathered. Makani had volume one of Heaven official's blessing-- I silently cheers-ed him with my book, since I was reading volume four. He cheersed back solemnly, and settled into the squashy chair with his tea. Maile appeared and settled next to me to read the I-Ching, and then sat on the carpet, casting oracles with three coins. Yin, Yang, like binary code, conjuring scraps of poetry and fortunetelling. Liko, not to be out-classed, helped herself to tea and cookies (rejected my strawberry kit-kat, thank goodness), and read Junie B Jones And The Stupid Smelly Bus, which is her very first chapter book. The lights were on the christmas tree, the cat curled her tail around her neat toes and blinked at us, the wind

  A Sand County Almanac and Sketches Here and There by Aldo Leopold My rating: 5 of 5 stars Reading Aldo Leopold makes me miss my husband. He was a man misplaced in time-- a range scientist in the tropics, a high desert island boy. He packed his bow and his orange vest and hunted grouse in Utah sage brush and Aspen stands, and his knife and dogs and mule to hunt boar and goat in Hawaiian jungle. He loved the way civilization-- well, maybe "civilization" is giving us too much credit-- the way humans and our funny way of doing things-- shaped landscape. As Simon Schama waxes syntactical, there is no such thing as a true wilderness. At this point in time, every place in nature is being shaped and reshaped by human impact. Aldo Leopold understands contradictions: he loves to hunt and he mourns the wolf he killed as a young man. He is a careful and hard working farmer on a shitty piece of land, and he is an evolutionary biologist who can describe the way agricultural management

  Well. Here we are. The computer screen is bleary as I type. My right eye doesn’t blink so I have to anoint it with thick goo. My open eyeball stubbornly faces the muzzle of the eye-gel, watches the distended drop descend. Never have my eyes been so brave. Amazing what paralysis does. I watch the drop fall onto my vision and then I pinch my eyelid together with my fingers to mimic a blink. My eye doesn’t care. It stares me down even as I try to tape it closed or cover it with an eyepatch. It just stares stubbornly into the dark. My eyelid does twitch, though. A little hitch of involuntary movement, like a dead frog kicking under the knife. Makes sense, those amphibious nerves have died. If “Died” is too dramatic a word, then -- they have been amputated. Pinched off and killed like a lizard’s tail.  My right ear is… strange. Imparied. As though I’m listening to the world from under the water. As if all of the sounds are flattened to be at the same level of intensity/volume/forefront/ba

  So something really, truly terrible has happened, but not to you. To your best friend, your sister, your parent. To somebody you love and care about. It’s bad. It’s super, super bad. Like, epically, tragicomically, telenovela-level bad. The kind of shit that would make for bad writing-- too over-the-top awful for fiction.  And what can you do? You can’t fix it. You can’t undo it. You can’t rip it up by the roots or time travel and unplant the seeds of it. You experience the adrenaline urge: RUN towards it, or run from it, FIGHT it, break it into a million pieces, FIX it. FREEZE and stare blankly at the flickering lights above the Arby’s (the most romantic place in Night Vale). You get a burst of terrible energy-- DO SOMETHING DO SOMETHING DO SOMETHING. Okay, so you and I, we’re in this place. What to DO?  (Am I writing this for myself? Yes. If it helps you, I’ll be really happy about that.) First  First, remember-- No wait. Actually first, have a drink of water. Drop your shoulders,

 The other day I didn't feel grief. It was so strange. It wasn't all day-- it was just for a few minutes, but it happened. I felt, for a moment, whole.  It has been five and half years since Matt's suicide. That's how long it has taken for time to soften this grief. So yes, it's true that time heals all wounds. But, hah. Think of geologic time, pals.  I am happy-- I have amazing things in my life. Cool smart talented kids, kind and loving friends-- I have plenty of rice and plenty of books and plenty of herbs and plenty of beet greens and a rattly old piano that's only missing one string but it's in the lowest octave so it's not too much of a nuisance.  I am happy and I have been breathing grief-oxygen for five years. I am happy and I have been wearing grief skin. The other day, I was briefly free and clear of it. The sun shone through the clouds and I looked around at my life with pleased surprise. Oh! I'm okay! Wow!  Today the normal pain of grief

Death is Stop It's a shock every time how complete the end is no loose ends for the dead. They left their luggage on the train. I have not cried enough for my grandma So last night I dreamed her funeral again  every pulpit talk and choir and cried "I don't believe it" I sobbed to my dad in the pew as I dreamed him grieving, too. I dream often of Rising tides Salt water lifting its soft cheeks up towards the sky the moon leaning down like a grandmother to kiss