one and only life

I see a spider crawling near me and I feel reflexive fear, and next automatic protection: protection of the spider from my fear, and my ability to kill it.

Other, worse days, I see a spider crawling near me and fill with a quick and mean rage, and on those worse days, I might kill the spider. I regret every spider I have killed that was not crawling on me in bed or poisonous and near my children.

I do not want to take the life of any single living creature. But I kill the fleas on my dogs and poisonous spiders near my children and sometimes, ants. When I watch the fleas going down the drain I think the entire time about their deaths. I wonder about being a flea. Kafka could imagine the bugs. I like to slip inside the life of everything I encounter for some period of time, small or large, and feel from inside out the true body of that life. The perspective of something tiny. The perspective of something enormous. How, to the enormous life, I am the tiny speck of flea, the thousands of ants, easily dismissed, krill soaring in the millions through the gaping baleen mouth of the blue whale.

Life in any form is miraculous. It is the true miracle, the parting of waters we wait to see has already parted, and the head of new life slid from inside the wet. 

I tell my children from the time they are gently the exact same thing when contemplating the hard, blisteringly black back of a beetle, or the tiny working arms of a fly: 

this is it's one and only life. it is not up to us to decide when it ends.

and they accept this of course so easily, because I am Their Mother. 

To spend your life highly aware of the miracle and singularity and astonishment of that life and of every life around you can be highly uncomfortable and sometimes slide into miserable, but it is also the way a godless speck like myself can without effort find meaning in this insane world, inside the miracle of an ant turning it's bulbous head to look my way, the round eye of the robin at our birdfeeder, the one-eyed baby possum looking at me with his one eye left (the other side a gaping hole from the claw of an owl) and I can see, as clearly as I can see my own hand, that this baby possum is thinking,

are you going to end my one and only life?

No, no, no, I sang to him as he circulated his tiny round ear, I am not. 

I want everyone and everything to turn an eye to something more powerful than them and to see in that large unknown thing that it only means good.

Wouldn't that be something?

The baby possum went to the Wildlife Preserve with Lola, and the woman picked him up and turned him left and then right before smiling at Lola. 'He'll be just fine,' she said.

The next night at dinner outdoors, we were visited by another baby possum, this one with both eyes in place, and a rat and a mouse.

Ever threw them food and curled up with the flashlight until all the tiny legs stopped moving in the bushes.

a list

watch Egyptian documentary
sleep
wake late
be with babies
drink iced espresso
eat
work, a little
clean
do this, and that, also swimming
husband
gym
family
food
books
writing
social media
eating
cleaning
family
pets
other
settling with darkness
documentary,
show,
book,
bed,
lavender oil at the chest,
over the heart,
fear, fear, fear
images of suffering,
comfort,
solitude,
fear,
determination,
acknowledgements,
tremblings,
vulnerability,
darkness, darkness, 
small lights,
self-talk,
thoughts of....
sleep.


children, husband, family, love, only.

Tuscon, Arizona

We took a family trip, Friday to Sunday, to my good friend Taymar's home. Taymar and Max, her husband, and their two boys, Caspian and Benny. Their home is gorgeous and used to be a ranch house and connected houses. Now two of those connected homes (all of which circle round a stone paved courtyard with glorious trees with circular stones around them in the center) are rented out as AirBnB. We stayed in one of those homes. 

Translation

Ever and I had a blast last night
that girl is fun
we are in that best friend stage. with Lola i got so, so blessed and she stayed that way until just this year, at fifteen. Lola is still my best friend, but i'm not hers. she'll come back to me. but meanwhile, she is growing up and a certain kind of separation has to happen at some point, to find out who you are without your parent as your person. they begin taking steps toward this that get bigger and bigger and bigger until they leave. 
it hurts and it is beautiful. it makes me cry with tears of joy and pride and tears of sorrow and grief. grief for the inevitable passage of time and the small deaths that also make up life.

here is Lola with her bestie, Lucy, on vacation over Spring Break, with Lola's bio dad Keith, who takes these girls on awesome trips. can you even believe how large and how tiny life can be? who can hold that reality in their bodies? that's why reality isn't made to be held on to. just translated as it comes to us. i couldn't love my children, all four, any more. i can't contain the love i have for them, so it flies out from me in tears and laughter and whispers and words and banging on the keyboard and cooking and praying and kissing and hugging and saying 'i love you' over and over, so many times every single day since Dakota, the first, was born, that far from being meaningless, those words are the mantra of the heart of life, i love you, i love you, i love you.

Spring Awakens

The things I've been doing the last two weeks are working. I am feeling again. 

The two things that have made the most difference are joining a gym, so weightlifting and cardio, and focusing on being in the moment with Ever.

It's a touchstone for me. Whenever I get lost, I move toward meditating on the unconditional and what gets me the most- trusting- love that my kids have for me. They TRUST me to be OK. They trust me and they desperately need me, more than they need anything...until, you know, they get older and suddenly that changes. But Ever is still there. She is six, and I am her world. Her face, her beautiful, like I can't stand how cute she is, how precious, how beautiful, face, looks at me with pure unadulturated trust. 

Somehow that expectation, that trust in me, allows me to trust in myself, and in life.

This Spring Break, Lola has been gone, and it's Ever and I. Long hours of gardening and playdates with friends and walks with the dogs and dates at Starbucks. Tonight we lay in bed for two hours giggling and climbing under the sheets and playing 'let's attack Ever because I love her so much and she's so cute' and this game we play all the time the last few months, which is I say Ever I love you,

and she says Mommy I love you more,

and I pretend to be horrified that she would say more, and we take it from there. 

You should just see her face when she looks at me. How could I not feel that? I could not feel it, if I didn't concentrate on it, if I didn't stay with it. If I didn't allow myself to trust that right now is all I can control or contain.

That's the trick to so much, so much of life. Just stay with it. Just be there. Right now. I'm all in. I'm in my body, typing this. I can feel these keys underneath my fingers and these tears rolling slowly down my cheeks and my feet, slightly cold, and my hair, a little too tightly wound on my head, and I can see the darkness encroaching around the lit computer, and I can feel the way that a little girl needs her mother, and how hard that mother fights to just be there, for something so beautiful, and so precious, really the only something that matters, or will matter, which is of course, love.

Time and Feet and Crying and Love

I wanted to tell you that when I wrote this and said everything will be fine when the schedule changes,
I was right. The schedule changed, and everything is fine. SO MUCH BETTER THANK YOU BABY JEBSUS.

This is us a few weekends ago. We drove to Dana Point to see Dakota and I finally got to see his new apartment and meet his new (totally sweet) roommate. We hung out and drank healthy smoothies and it was wonderful. Dakota is 22 and Ian is 19 and I still almost on a daily basis find myself suddenly, after just glancing at an old photo or recalling a memory, filling with tears and holding back a good cry because they are grown, so grown, and everything changes, and everyone grows and what that means and looks like you never know, you don't control. And the love is so huge that to fit my human sized body around it can often be painful. 

I am so sentimental that looking at a photo of my foot from a week ago can make me weepy. Seriously, it's pretty bad. I have serious existential issues with time. Meditation is something I do almost daily and I usually think about what is the point of being in the moment when I'm not sure that anymore I believe 'the moment is all we have.' In fact, I'm almost sure I don't believe that. At least, it doesn't feel that way, my brain doesn't perceive time that way. It feels more like we have all the moments that were or will be, floating around on some other dimension as ghosts, and we can feel their existence. What does time mean when someone we love dies, for instance? Is the moment 'all we have'? Then what of that person's life, all the love we have? The moment of now is incredibly important in human life, no denying that. But.

All my friends have big butts.

gratitudes and pleasures of today

writing Christmas lists; electronically making Christmas lists: Amazon

Mr. Curry pulling me onto the bed with him to snuggle; smelling his armpits.

Lola and friend jumping from behind pillar and screaming BAZINGA at Mr. Curry, Ever and I 

my body, strong despite disease, still able to exercise, have sex, run, dance, pee and poop

getting published at The Development Set  my first long form piece, very proud

starbucks doubleshot

my dog Katie, Katalini, Tortellini, Torta, Space-Bat

talking to Dakota on the phone for an hour

Ever putting makeup on only one eyebrow

Facebook

Rubios salmon tacos, guacamole and chips

my bookshelves full of books

when people say 'oh sweet baby jesus'

the feeling of getting to lay down and sleep when i am exhausted, which is often

the weather today, pointedly, that it was not 98 degrees again

the feeling when i've submitted a story or an article that i worked hard on, which i did today

face peels

facial serums that 'drench' and 'quench' and 'renew'

oils: coconut, avocado, olive

flea combing Katie and washing the fleas off the comb down the drain, every night. sometimes i do Wolfie too, but he doesn't sleep in the bed. they still have a scattering of fleas, even though i bathe them, comb them, and vacuum every day.

Ever, Lola, Ian, Dakota

my husband is my best friend and my person and we continue to be so lucky to be hot as hell between the sheets, such luck, and i am still, even more, in love with him than ever, so in love, butterfly in stomach when i see him unexpectedly in love, and he with i, and luck, luck, and hard work and endurance and courage on both our parts, and love, love, love

The Time When Ever Licked Lola Suddenly & In Between Captures

Lola and I Vlog Together

s

Lola and I have started a new Vlog series where we talk freely as mother and teen.

Watch it here.

A Rawther Mundane Conversation

hey!

i'm almost done my novel.

i'm going to have a first draft by end of August.

maybe sooner.

mr. curry is taking the kids and leaving me alone for an entire day in this house with this computer with Agitate My Heart and i'm taking the bright-red beating heart and shaping it closed

heart-shaped closed

i'm going to drink some and when i type the final sentence i'm going to probably cry and then wail and then scream and dance and call mr. curry crying wailing and screaming and dancing and he's going to have that sound his voice gets when he's really proud and excited and he's going to say sweetheart the way he does and i'm going to ask him to leave the kids at my mom's and come home and throw me on the bed and celebrate naked and half-drunk.

-----

i am somewhat tired of blogging because there aren't enough comments. i really miss the comments. i only comment myself maybe five times a week on blogs, but that's five times more than most people in this comment-less climate of blog, where everyone is too busy commenting on opinion pieces like if suburban wives have too much or too little sex, or if oysters should be slurped and is it really appropriate for boys to have testicles after all or should the x go next to the o or really we  need to consider the lobster-

so i have more views now, so many and years ago i thought that's what i wanted, on a chirpy bloggy day when i post at the 'right time' i can get 1000 page views, but three comments

i'd rather have half the page views and ten or twenty comments

however i'm an irregular blogger and it's the consistent ones who get good comment,
yeah, i know that.

-----

dakota's band LAW is becoming a big deal and i'm SO PROUD OF MY SON that it makes my entire heart feel two sizes too large. their second song just came out on Bandcamp and it's called Getting By and they have some insane amount of plays already and Sublime FB shared their song ( Jake the lead singer is Sublime's former, now deceased, son ) and that send it into the stratosphere. they worked so hard on these tracks. dakota and jake have been playing together since dakota was 16! 

here's the song and you can find it on You-Tube also

-----

i am working as a copywriter, content producer AND virtual assistant right now. 

i want a job as a content provider or staff writer at at least 32 hours a week, a job i kick ass at.

-----

i watched these documentaries last night that i loved. one was on Philip Roth ( one of my top five fav. novelists ) and one on Alice Walker. Here they are.

-----

our cat Maybelle is pregnant. we found this out mid surgical attempt to spay her. the vet called and said UM YOUR CAT IS PREGNANT STUPID

-----

our dog has worms of undetermined kind. i am taking a poop sample to the vet tomorrow. meanwhile bathed both animals today and washed all sheets and bedding and the couch covers and vacuumed and cleaned and grocery shopped

------

so it goes

baby angel pierced my heart

oh Ever Elizabeth.

four years old.

you write your name, like this: EvEr

you told me, when pulling off your own shirt for the first time, mommy i am taking my own path. i'm going my own way and you have to let me, ok?

i know i have to let you, but not just yet.

Dakota is 21 Today

Happy Birthday my boy. We celebrated our hearts out yesterday and today is quiet. I am remembering the day you were born. I can never forget.

This is a poem I wrote for Dakota years ago.

you came to stand on my tailbone,
x-ray white heel on an angry nerve cluster
a fist in the whaling arc of rib. i could feel you
in there - this is when i understood alive

understood i was alive. i lay on the couch at night 
full in belly and face, half open books across your skull
erupting from my left side, a bud
erupting from the soil, already breaking open

everything. every night, i cried, and prayed, and wrote
and every night recognized a little more the essential
draw of parenthood: life goes on, life goes on.
i had sank more than halfway down the tunnel, 

i had touched the bottom with my fingertips.
the very existence of you meant
life was not beyond repair. you are nineteen,
and nothing has been good, or safe

i had sank more than halfway down
when my breasts swelled up like tulips in Spring
the nipples rosy and dripping with early rain,
and Mom said ' Do you think you might be pregnant?'

you are nineteen, 
and you will make the best decision of your life
one of us born for the other, 
which one, i do not know.

The Verbs and the Being

Sometimes parenting in the active, the verb parenting, is the simple best.

Summer encroaches. The sky is thicker. Stewing in the heat and bright eyes of sun.

The greens are greener. They fold in over us in a way that comforts me like the old growing plants and creepers of Mississippi. Southern California comes into its own and blossoms. The light curls over Ever's face. I work on my copywriting assignments on the wooden desk I inherited from my mother years ago, pushed agains the open window. Ever is feet away on the netted trampoline in her Captain America underpants, flinging her body as high into the air as she can, sturdy legs working furiously- those same legs that kicked against my ribcage /trampoline/ for nine bizarre months ( my gynecologist: i've never in all my years seen a baby continue to turn like this in the ninth month )- and the sky mottled overhead, she spreads her arms and legs in the air and her smile is enormous, the smile of God! and Lola is on the patio bricks with a guitar and her hair in her face like the hair in the face of millions of teenagers before her, and she is singing i'm just a teenage dirtbag baby and then she is singing oh mirror in the sky what is love, and then she is singing Nirvana... and her voice is so, so good. I wonder if she is going to really pursue voice, because she has a gift. 

Mr. Curry folds his arms into his armpits and watches the girls. I watch him. 

My living dog, Wolfgang, is freshly bathed. Hosed down and scrubbed clean. He presses against me and his eyes ask me to tell him he is OK. This is the job I do for the last twenty years for all creatures great and small of my family, and so I do it, I tell him, you are OK, Wolfie, you are more than OK. The corners of his mouth turn up, his tongue comes out and his eyes narrow so dramatically I restrain a laugh, I do not want to hurt his feelings, or end his love-eyes.

The Best Daddy's Take Phone Calls

Ever calls Mr. Curry on the phone: ' Daddy? '

Mr. Curry: ' Ever sweetie, hi, what are you doing? '

Ever: ' Well I have poop in my vagina and Mommy said she'd wipe gently but I still won't let her get it out and I don't want her to. '

Mr. Curry: ' Sweetie that's not good for your vagina, you have to let Mommy get that out, OK? '

Ever: ' But I really just don't like it Daddy. '

Mr. Curry: ' I know sweetie you're OK, let Mommy take care of you. '

Ever: ' But Daddy I don't like it. But Mommy says she's gentle but I still don't like getting this poopy out of my vagina. '

Mr. Curry: ' OK sweetie, that's not good in there so let Mommy get it out, you're OK honey, all right? '

Ever: ' OK Daddy. '

Mr. Curry: ' I love you Ever. '

Ever: ' I love you Daddy. '

Everkins - Kenny - Kinny-Kins

she's four and she always brings to mind the words life force
i always wanted a child with freckles
i always wanted a little girl with long waves of hair
i always wanted a baby with an oversized head and great big brains
i always wanted a little girl with an actual twinkle in her eye
i always wanted a daughter with a smile made from stardust and puppies and magic
i always wanted a kid with three nicknames
i always wanted an unstoppable energy force that brings to mind fast forward video footage of flowers unfolding from bud
i didn't know i did, but now it's so obvious.
that's love.

time + love = eternity

Dakota Wolf and myself 2015, Dakota Wolf and myself 1996

time moves mysteriously and not the way we wrestle it into presentation: a clock face, rigid upright arrows, pointing directly at a fixed spot, which will predictably and irrevocably change to the next, predetermined spot. time means to me that this little boy and that young man above move in and out of each other's bodies like ghosts. the little blonde capped boy flickers across Dakota's face as he looks at me and when i close my eyes and press to kiss his cheek the rough stubble moves me suddenly into a room where my boy is rubbing his round cheeks and saying one day, he'll be a big boy and have hair face, momma, and his high giggle echoes as i open my eyes and look at the young man, still smiling at me, still in my belly, still in my arms, still in my lap, still clutching Pokemon figurines and carrying his card case, still furious and running from the house with his cell in one hand and shoes in the other, still yelling in the living room, eyes ablaze and hands trembling, still falling into my arms crying, still laughing in his bedroom with the door shut, still leaving and coming home, still home, always home, always my boy.

Lola's Mother's Day Video

My Movie from Maggie May Ethridge on Vimeo.



Only the best gift I've ever gotten, outside of my kids artwork and music.

Today was overflowing with love. I woke to homemade banners and balloons, we all went out to coffee and bagels, Dakota surprised me and showed up from Long Beach and we all then, with my mom, went on a hike, and then to dinner, and when I got home, Ian had left me a card in a sneaky drop off at the house and Lola gave me this movie.

I'm allowed to be this happy, right?

Arms

Lola's arm.
Dakota's arm.

2015

simple life

i have arrived home at 9:30pm.

run five miles in dark suburbia. wait- hours before, at 4pm, the whole family walks to pizza. i get gluten free with veggies and it is delicious. we get ice cream. i get kiddie sized chocolate and peanut butter and it is delicious. one mile there, eat, one mile back. wait- hours before, at 1pm, Mr. Curry comes home from work, dashing in on his way to a job site, to help Bodie, our 12 year old golden, get up. his hind legs are not working well, one leg hangs useless and splays like a donkey foot underneath his bulk. Mr. Curry lifts him and finally he get his leg up, takes off, pees, eats, we praise him and give him wet dog food and pet his grey face. arthritis or cancer. the picks of the aging body are slim pickings. we will need to take him for an x-ray. Wolfgang, our 11 10 year old mix, has been licking a place on Bodie's lower back right above his tail, for weeks. Mr. Curry and i discuss stories of dogs who can smell cancer and eye each other sadly. still, in that moment, i wonder if i could get Mr. Curry in the bedroom alone. wait- hours before, i wake with Ever and Lola, Lola being home, on Spring Break. wait- hours before, the night before, the three of us have slept together. we went to bed late. Mr. Curry, who wakes at 4:30 am, went to bed at 8:30 the night before. I read three books to Ever, cuddled her, kissed her muffin pits and her face, told her i loved her for the 30 or 40th time that day, put her to bed, and then Lola and I watched one Modern Family and one 30 Rock. 

we wake and i feel the tendrils of joy throughout my body. i tell Lola, if I had to do one thing for the rest of my life, it would be to be with my family. i have told my kids since they were little, if nothing else ever happens to me, being your mother, being the daughter of my mother, being Mr. Curry's wife, being in this family- it's more than enough. i would not feel cheated. i would love to do more. but that more does not haunt me or drive me. it motivates me. it excites me. but i am deeply satisfied with love.

everything is possible

this isn't a comeback i've been here for years, re-birth, awakening, existential realization, sensory health,  vitamins, cod liver oil, the legs and arms pistons through suburban night ( coil, spring, pain ) hormonal recalibration, don't call this mid-life i've been here for years

i am afraid of some of the things that i know. i know them, not the way you know your bed, the way you could slide the covers down- and probably do- in darkness, moving your pillow into just the right position, avoiding the corner of the bookshelf, pulling your feet up into just the right spot on the mattress, leaning over without seeing but feeling for the reading lamp and then, just beyond, the glass of ice water you set just minutes ago. not like that, but close. some things i know that i am afraid of are that so far, in this unfathomable infinitesimal blink of life i've been gifted, when i do what i believe i need to do, no matter how impossible, ridiculous or injurious in other ways it may be, if i believe it is really, gut wrenchingly the one right thing to do, and i do it, everything works out better than it was before.

and then i think, no, i just have a very supportive mother.