In grief and in motherhood I often forget about the sky. The way it fills and empties. It’s pinks and the turquoise I love so much on the ocean. Catching my breathe when I open my daughter’s curtains in the morning.
Our screech owl back and up on the telephone pole.
Days of clouds.
I slice the rind off the ruby red grapefruit and the oranges and offer them to my daughter before putting them on my plate with toast and two hard boiled eggs in an attempt to take care of myself.
Thinking over and over I wish I had the courage to set myself on fire.
My daughter playing quietly in the corner on her own. Still in her pajamas.
In motherhood I also forget about time.
My wedding rings leaving a rash on my finger because I forget to take them off. Washing the dishes, bathing the baby. Wrapping her up in a towel and carrying her to bed to read. Mickey In The Night Kitchen, Chicken Soup With Rice, They All Saw A Cat. And I have to keep myself from crying, as the cat walks through the world with it’s whiskers, ears, and paws. My daughter repeating the refrain, sometimes in chorus with me. Sometimes on her own. That at the doctors when he asks what words she can say, we say we’ve lost count. She’s speaking in sentences. I tell him.
You know this is not normal right? My girlfriend, who is a speech therapist says as we watch our daughters run around the roses, mine chasing hers, saying Hug and kiss! Hug and kiss! Trying to grab for her friend. To say goodbye. That one night a few weeks ago, we were having pizza and my daughter got down from her chair, ran down the hall, and came running back and stood before all of us, and said Bye bye friend! and then turned to me and said. Bathtime, Mama.
Her ability to tell us exactly what she needs continues to astound me. As someone who never knows what she needs. As someone who still doesn’t know when to say bye bye!
When I knew the cat was dying I could feel the last bit of joy draining from my body. Syrupy. Sticky. A hole where she had wiggled her way into my heart. Her paw extending from her cage at the pound when we walked by. At 4 months old.
It rains without any warning, sun shower, spring shower, summer shower, the smell of grass and heat mixing. There would be a rainbow if one knew where to look.
The men come by and talk about an orchard. About edible garden beds. About pink gravel.
When we were in Mallorca, and the weather had just turned two days before we left, my godmother who had been dying, began to die, would die that night, that when I hung up the phone, I sat down on the bed and I turned to my husband and I said, I think I’m pregnant. The wind whipping through the tiny town we were spending the night in. One soul making room for the other. And I knew it would be a girl, because I had dreamt of her once. Blonde and in a swing, white sand beneath us, the ocean behind, a breeze. And she had some of the longest legs I had ever seen. And she was smiling. And she was beautiful. And when we got back to Los Angeles, and walked down to the Friday’s Farmers Market, all I wanted was oranges, and the scent of everything made me see-saw.
And just before my daughter was born, my godmother came back to visit. And she was so real, standing in our new dining room, in my dream, looking at the wallpaper saying Well this is just fantastic! The tropical birds and the monkeys. And then she turned to me and said without any prompting, Nobody understands how long this takes! Motioning to her body. Do you know how long this took! SIX HOURS! Six! To get into the form you recognize me as. And I could see her hurtling through the ether into the body we all knew, and I woke my husband up and I said Stevie was here. I wish you could have been in the dining room with us.
And for a while, she was still around, I understood, and then she was gone.
It’s different. I told my husband a few weeks after we put the cat down. When I was lamenting not just holding her one last time, for a little bit longer, her head in my hands, how I wanted to take a picture of her beautiful body after I laid her out in the attendant’s arms, how peaceful she seemed. With people, what you respond to is not their body, so when they go, it’s different, you know they’ve left, it’s very clear. But with her, so much of what we had was her body. Her fur. Her face.
You know what they say about grief. The man who had taught me how to be human says when we meet up with each other to watch the trash trucks and the almost accidents happen over and over on the street in front of us. Well, yeah - I start to say opening my arms up, and then stop. That grief begets grief. That we are all so ill prepared - and I want to mention the war, because I don’t know how anyone can talk about anything without mentioning the war. The grief and gratitude that we are alive. And not being bombed and not being starved. And I want to ask him if he remembers telling me 14 years ago that I could change associations with the month of February, that it didn’t have to remind me of loss.
And it has been years since the first man I ever loved has visited me. That after he died he never let me see his face, his body stretched along the ladder, in my old home, his face turned up towards the ceiling, fixing a leak in the skylight. His left ankle wrapped up. And it is so strange to me that he has not aged while I continue to grow older, and now even older than when he died. And I had wanted to name my daughter after him, to be able to carry him back into the living. Just like I also wanted to name my daughter after my grandmother, who every once in a while I get a glimpse of in her eyes. A small little twinkle.
And sometimes when we are driving on the freeway, towards the mountains, I’ll say to my husband where did this child come from? And he’ll laugh and say my godmother’s name. And I’ll say, oh she sent her, for sure, she orchestrated this but it’s not her. Like sometimes when my mother and I wish my grandmother was here to meet my daughter I say, she already knows.
Suddenly it is Spring again. And this is the horrible thing about being alive. The grief of witnessing war mixed with the joy of being able to smell the dew this morning, the grass overgrown, the scent of someone smoking a cigarette down the street at 7 am. The morning still cool. Suddenly it is Spring again and I want to fall in love, and I want to have another child, and I want to be perched above the sea, pointing the dolphins out to my daughter, raising their fins into the sun.
Thank you for this Jane...doing a bit of grieving before the final grief right now.