love letter

To another woman,

Hell yes, we are addicts. We come back, day after day, to a mostly thankless job as mothers, wives, partners,writers, readers, people... Hell yes, I decided to get a pack of cigarettes to help me with my stress and to provide me with a quiet stroll in the evening, and now its all I can think about, getting out to have a smoke- Hell yes. And there we are in our pipes, looking cute for all the entrapment of the 'baby in the well! baby in the well!'.

And as myself, I am not just trying to figure out the mothergame, I am trying to gyrate my way through wifing and spin into my next year some sort of action of which to be proud, to OWN, as I do this job of getting older. . .

HELL YES.

We have to crave, we MUST, it is imperative for us to stay passionate and alive.

And I am so glad that I have these women to thank, to read, to talk to, my friends that I look at with such admiration or incredulity. Locked in our pipes or no, we are damn fine examples to each other. Intimacy is a huge f'ing risk. Hell yes. We ARE the pipes that bind, and leak and rust, for all their pipely glory, we are they. and vice versa. and so on.

LOve,

Wife?MotheR>?SH(T?!

nothing

I've got nothing to say . I'm recovering from a vomiting child and nearly overwhelming memory.
I am off to Maine again to bury my grandmother and somehow feel that I should dig the hole myself, as part of an earthy process in honor of her, a gripping of the substance of it all. I have made a block of patchwork to send with her, to give her a laugh and also to make something so I can feel part of a larger world of people who do that, make things. Not a thing.

cringe, float and drift

To look back on the last few weeks postings is a cringe-worthy project. really. I have been so genuinely upset for so long, its amazing how definitively I have moved spaces. Ask me next month where I find myself, but for now I am definitively moved. MOVED. as in, whats the new address?

I can wait to get to heaven, but it is definitely not fearful. I only have a little while that my children are so young, and I should pull it in and up and get on with the love of it. I may get frown lines but they may be balanced by my laugh lines, if I work on it. (see crazed hyena mom in the corner)

God is good and great and works in mysterious and obvious ways.

I love my hands. They rock and swaddle and bathe and lift. I love my husband's skin for all its pinkyIrish lustre. He and I commune about dirt. There isn't anybody else who'd answer me that way. No body.
Nothing is perfect and there is a lot around here that exemplifies that - but- what of it? I have a messy house and two messy kids and a messy marriage and I don't vacuum enough and my kids know they are loved by a hairy, frowning, singsongy woman who makes a mean lasagna. I love this. and I am sad, and I still love this.

I have always had a deep deep aversion to being out of control. I'm not saying that it makes me mature in any way, in fact probably quite the opposite.. but so it is. ( I should call Chakra Carol, yes) Emotionally, I feel that the only time I've brushed against this has been during my tumultuous love affair with my husband. Never before and never since have I been so nauseated by the wild wailing of my heart. And now, with all this sadness in the air and the feelings surfacing about death and heaven and God and the incompatibility of what I think is coming versus what I 'know' is coming - - - I am pretty sure of what I believe and I think I am putting some sort of 'test' on the table... will Grammie let me know when she goes, for instance?

----my irises bloomed for the first time since we've lived in this house, this town. and thats my sign, the first of many.
----------------------------------------------------------so up to Maine we went, and I visited with Grammie, spent some time alone...told her what I needed to, showed her the boys (for whom she roused to say hello there and to chuckle) and she died the next morning while we all (children, grandchildren, greatgrandchildren) sat in her kitchen having breakfast and debating issues. Some kids were in the gully, some in the tree... and we got the call all together. it was pretty amazing
and I know now that my belief in heaven and where she is , is firm. I truly believe in Grammie playing cards with her brothers now, re-meeting her folks, holding Gerry's hand and laughing at Joyce.

I feel like I am standing on a feather, my life path a drift on the wind. I am learning my balance. some know it and travel with arms wide open. others believe themselves stationary and miss the natural lift. i think i've got the right idea. ( i hope to God that Russell doesn't read this as he'll never forgive my ending)

wahwah wonder

Not only am i getting frown lines- but i'm turning into a whiner. and a crap one, at that. I've lost my new england stoicism and am weeping all the time as I move about the day.

what the hell is going on? I'm going to put beautiful pictures in, some of my kids a long time ago. . there is a hell of a lot of beauty in my days and I'm fucking goddamned tired of not being swayed and swooned by what there is.. and what there has been.

Look at my grandmother. with my sister and with my son. Look at her. Harriet.

Keep going . Get my own goddamned fierce back. enough with the crying already.

maybe I should get my ass to church. maybe turn my hearing aid off and sit in forced meditation.

GET THE FIERCE BACK.

I think my last post was a bulletin of sorts, a line up of things touched only briefly but ready indeed for their sentences.

My personal life is causing me stress and the interweaving of so many stresses is giving me pimples in my hair, which I just do not understand. and its inflaming my gut, which I do understand. I haven't heard from the insurance folks yet so we are trying to get all of our medical needs squeezed into the next four weeks while we are still insured. I have to have a wisdom tooth pulled and I am in love with my gay dentist. so in love. . .

My grandmother has been a fierce woman all of her life, she has not gotten everything she wanted or even close, but she was a standup woman with a family of five kids and the house/farm of her own. She'll be ninety one this summer and up until the last year or so, she's lived on her own and been the go-to girl for all the other girls. My two sons have quilts that she made for them, my 18 month old got his within a month of being born. She has a kajillion grandchildren and we've all gotten quilts and now she's moving on to the great-grands. She is in a swim class for crissakes. a SWIM class. she's probably more fit than I am.

And because of loads of crap and the healthcare system in America... she is foundering in a 'rehabilitation' facility. failing. getting timid.

and I want to scream through the air to her to RETAIN THE FIERCENESS. HOLD ON GRAMMIE. GO OUT WITH A GOOD TIME, NOT THIS CRAP UNCERTAINTY. GET THE FIERCE BACK, THEN DUCK OUT, IF YOU MUST. GET THE FIERCE BACK.