Talking About Breasts Today

Saturday, October 11, 2008

Talking About Breasts Today

It would appear that the next issue of W magazine is going to feature a cover shot by Brad Pitt of Angelina Jolie breastfeeding one of their twins. It is, as you can see, a gorgeous picture of a tired but radiant-looking new mother. I remember that feeling of being completely overwhelmed and exhausted (and I had my babes one at a time) and yet at the same time, feeling as if I was doing the exact one thing I had been put on earth to do, which was to nurture the baby with the same body which had produced it.

We are, after all, mammals, which means we have mammary glands to produce milk for our young. We don't have to go out and catch bugs to feed them or regurgitate partly digested fish into their beaks. We simply put them to our breasts and with a little instinct on both the part of the mother and the baby and a little learned-skill and some initial pain, milk flows, the baby drinks, all is well.

You can even read while you breastfeed, which for me meant the best of all possible worlds, and probably why I nursed my children for eons.

When a woman nurses, her body produces a hormone called oxytocin, which is a sort of natural bliss-producing drug. You can see its effects on Angelina's face. It was more than brilliant of Mother Nature to develop this system because if there's anything harder than being a new mother I don't know what it is. Especially if you have other children to tend to.

Of course there are a myriad of other reasons to breastfeed our young. And yet, even today, when we know all of the benefits of breastfeeding it's something that many women do as surreptitiously as possible because they never know, no matter how discrete they are trying to be, if some ignorant flight attendant or restaurant server is going to ask her to cover up.

I myself was once told by a mall security guard that nursing my baby in public was indecent exposure. Since my daughter's entire body was under my voluminous shirt at the time I have no idea how he made this deduction but it was completely disconcerting and disturbing and I'll never forget it.

So I love seeing pictures of celebrities breastfeeding their babies. It may be a ridiculous notion on my part but I believe that these images give credence to the fundamental right of mothers and babies to nurse when and wherever babies need to nurse. These pictures say that even famous, extremely busy women know the value and beauty of nursing their babies.

One of my favorite celebrity mother and nursing child images is an Annie Leibovitz portrait of Jerry Hall, former supermodel, former wife of Mick Jagger, nursing her son, Gabriel.

It's a stunning image and strikes me as being, well, ridiculously humorous and at the same time, incredibly powerful.
It shows a beautiful woman, a completely gorgeous woman, dressed to the nines, holding her naked fine, fat cherub of a son to her breast, studying the camera with a powerful, almost cruel gaze. It would appear that in this woman there is at least as much testosterone coursing its way through her veins as oxytocin.
What was she thinking when this picture was taken? Was she thinking about her dinner reservations? Her husband's latest peccadillo? It would not appear that she is worrying overmuch about her child or the damage he may be doing to her fabulous breasts. He is simply there, doing what breastfeeding children do, amusing himself by playing with the neckline of his mother's shirt, nestled into her lap with his foot in her hand. He doesn't know that his father is one of the world's most famous rock stars or that his mother has some of the longest, most celebrated legs in the universe. He doesn't care. He is simply a son, nursing his mother's breast. And she is, along with everything else she is, simply a woman doing what women do, which is to nurse her child.

Beautiful.

The image of madonna and child is one of the most rendered works in art and yet, somehow in our culture, the sight of a woman with a baby at her breast is considered a great deal less than sacred and it has taken actual laws to ensure that women can nurse their babies whenever and wherever they deem fit.

I was actually told to go nurse my baby in the mall restroom if I needed to nurse at the mall which just points to the fact that to this young security guard, my nursing was more of an excrement issue than a nutritional one. Let's leave the sacred out of it entirely. And I was the mother of a very young child and I wasn't dressed to the nines but in a very baggy t-shirt and skirt, and I wasn't famous and I was no doubt sleep-deprived and despite the fact that I had already nursed three children and believed to my bones in my right to do so, I was not only taken aback by this stupid guard but I was shamed.

My initial reaction was to feel shame.

And that's so ridiculous.

How I wish I had seen that picture of Jerry Hall before that day. I might have knocked that uniformed and badged yokel to his knees with my powerful, disdainful gaze. I might have whipped out the other breast and squirted him in the eye with a shot of breastmilk.

Or, perhaps, if I had seen that picture of Angelina, I would merely have smiled at him with a blissed-out gaze and told him that surely, he was mistaken and now please, little man, run away because he was disturbing a very sacred moment and was harshing my oxytocin mellow.

I hope that young nursing mothers see these images of celebrities breastfeeding and take them to heart. Give them the courage and spunk to do what they know is right. To not feel shame if some ignorant fool tells them to cover up and go to a stinky public bathroom to nurse her baby.
Because dammit, breastfeeding is our right as mammals, it is our right as mothers, it is as sacred to nurse any infant in the world as it was for Jesus' mother to nurse him.

In my opinion, all nursing mothers are madonna and child, whether they're hanging on the wall of an art museum or sitting at McDonald's and we need to grow up and realize that. That breasts are here for a reason which has nothing to do with titillation. Great word, huh?

And if someone notices a woman nursing her baby in public, he or she has every right to avert his or her eyes if they don't want to see it. In fact, that would be the polite thing to do. Or, they could fall to their knees and worship at her feet.

I think Jerry Hall would have liked that. I think she would have liked it a lot. And Jesus? He would appreciate it too.

Cuttin' Out The Middle Man

Friday, April 3, 2009

Cuttin' Out The Middle Man

Last night we had rehearsal in the rec hall of the Monticello Episcopal Church because the Opera House was hosting another event for the bicyclers. Because we've been under various flood warnings and tornado watches for the past week or so and because the rains and lightening and thunder we've been getting have been truly amazing, I thought it would be funny to announce, as I walked into the room, "Well, I hope god doesn't strike this building down because I'm in it."

Now let me set the scene here:
In the play I'm currently in, two of the actors are ministers, one is a minister's wife, one a devout Christian of some sort and our director is about the sweetest, nicest Episcopalian in the world who claims that Episcopalian's welcome all sinners and will offer to buy you a drink.

And me?

The only reason I don't claim to be an atheist is because I don't know everything and I do try to keep an open mind but really, I do not have the god gene. I was raised in a Community Church and I don't know quite what they believe but we did sing the Old Rugged Cross and the Doxology and we said the Lord's Prayer and there was preaching involved although hell was not emphasized.

I tried to go through a religious phase as girl of about nine or ten when I was being sexually abused and that did not work out well. I read the entire Bible by the age of twelve. Every word. Every begat and smiting. And let me tell you- there is some twisted stuff in the Bible and we could talk about that for days, but let's not.

Anyway, the abuse continued and I never heard god's voice or saw any evidence he'd been listening and I figured out for myself that hell can be right here on earth and then I got into music and realized that heaven can be too. I did LSD (so sue me- it was about a million years ago) and that particular drug wrapped itself around my brain stem and shook it and showed me a few things about the connection of every atom in this universe and well, that was it for me.
I lost my religion, whatever it was I might have had but I became what I can only describe as spiritual.

So anyway, last night when I said that thing about the church being struck down, I felt comfortable saying it because my cast mates are loving people who know me and know I am, for the most part, a good person with an open heart and that I try. They also know I'm not a believer in what they believe and that seems to be okay but one of the ministers, who is more of a traditionally southern Christian than the others said, "Well, Mary. Why do you think you said that?"

And I was taken aback.

"Well, because it was a joke," I said.
I really don't think that god is going to strike down a church rec room because I'm in it. I did Weight Watchers meetings in a church in Thomasville, Georgia for years and that church is still standing, every one of its red bricks firmly in place.

"Maybe you said it because you know you should go to church," said my very Christian cast mate.

"Uh. No." I said. And was reminded once again that although it is quite accepted for a person of religious belief to go off on a non-believer, even in a sweet, Christian way, it is totally NOT all right for a heathen to go off on a believer. It would not be appropriate at all for me to say what I was thinking which was that I have heard the message his church no doubt proclaims my entire life and I am in no way open to the idea that I have to believe in a Magical Being to make my way through life in a meaningful, moral way, nor do I believe that believing in that Magical Being is going to send me up to heaven when I die.

Now see, I have a deep affection for this man. He's a firm believer in Jesus Christ, his savior, and he lives that way. I respect that. And I think he respects me, even though I'm sure he prays for me and would love to get me to give my life over to his Jesus.

So what he said didn't so much offend me or make me angry as just a little bit indignant and he knew it and said, "I love you, Mary. In Christ."

"I love you, too, B.," I answered. "I'm just cutting out the middle man."

And isn't that it?
I mean I get up and I look around me some days and I see beauty that makes me swoon. Sometimes just the sight of the way the light cuts through the trees and casts gold upon them makes me cry. And I've been this way since I was a child. I think we are all born with this great capacity to respond to nature and music and the love of those we love and goodness and mercy and great literature and art with such appreciation and awe that it opens us up inside and we recognize holiness when we see it. I mean, if you can see a baby get born and not see holiness, there is something dead inside of you. If you can hold someone's hand when they are dying and not recognize holiness then I feel sorry for you. If you can can walk through spring and not have to stop over and over again to be grateful for the holiness of the renewal of life then truly, I don't understand.

But why and how does Jesus get involved? Why do we need to believe that he was born and died and was resurrected to get the fact that all of this is a fucking miracle?

The creationists, those folks who don't believe in evolution and who prefer to think that their god sat up there in heaven and painted the stripes on the zebra and the petals on the camellia and the colors on the sky for sunrise always ask how we could have gotten to this place in this perfect world without the intervention of a perfect god?

And the response of course is that this perfection is here because it's the only way it all could have evolved in this particular set of circumstances, this briny soup of dust and water, comet breath and sunlight. Oh man. When you think about it, when you really think about the vast amount of life here before us and its sweetness and its, well, glory, it's too much for the puny mind of us all to grasp, and yet, not really.

We can grasp it. We can even worship it.

But why do we have to humble ourselves before a creator? Why do we have to bring Jesus into it?

Oh. There's so much I could say here. The discrepancies in the Bible. The huge number of religions which have come and gone and stayed and gone again. The unloving and prejudiced things people say and claim that their god proclaimed them to be true, meanwhile shutting themselves off from the true miracles of differences and the beauty those differences bring to our lives. The condemnation of those differences, the hatred of "the sin" while the "sinner" is embraced.
The way children suffer and die even if prayers are offered endlessly. The way we haven't, even after eons of religions coming and going, figured out that killing people in the name of god or country doesn't solve a damn thing.
Not to mention diseases, natural disasters and plain old stupidity.

But that's not what I want to say today.

What I want to say is that I don't want my soul to be limited to a belief. I want my soul and my heart to be open to every leaf, every drop of sweet water or salt, to every baby born, to every bird's song, to the frenzy of spring's mating frogs, their passionate desire to froth the puddles and ponds left by the rains with their need to join together and make more frogs.

I don't want to have to go back and check and make sure this is all okayed by Jesus and his big daddy. I don't want to have to filter my love, my passions, my angers and my fears through a set of religious rules and beliefs.

I just want to be who I am, here on this earth in this universe with its good and its bad, its evil and its miracles, its holiness and its horror. I don't want to have to figure out why a loving god would allow this but not that. I want my actions to come from my heart and from love and what I observe around me, based on trying to be the best me I can possibly manage.

Is that so wrong?

Of course not.

So why is it so hard to say these things to a believer?

I don't know.

But I'm going to start trying. Not to defend myself against religion, but to offer what I feel, in my very own heart, instead of meekly bowing my head and letting someone try to make me feel like I'm a sinner because I don't buy their brand.

Why not?

Because I DO believe. I believe in a lot of things. And just because I don't want to go to a church where they speak of the father, the son and the holy ghost (and what the HELL is the holy ghost?) as the holy trinity, doesn't mean I don't believe in holy trinities.

I believe in the mother, the father, and the child.
I believe in the light, the love and the yearning for them both.
I believe in fire and water and air.
I believe in the seed, the dirt and the rain.
I believe in the guitar, the bass, the drums.
I believe in the hips, the breasts, the feet.
I believe in the bone, the blood, the breath.
I believe in the pen, the ink, the paper.
I believe in the chicken, the egg and the question.

I believe that breast milk is sacred although I do not think the communion wine is.
I believe that home made bread can feed your soul but I do not believe the host is the body of Christ.
I believe the vagina can should be worshiped because it delivers life but I do not believe the cross should be because it represents the cruelty of man.

I believe in this day, this heart, this mind, these hands and these words.

I believe in love. And not just the love between a man and a woman or the love a parent has for a child or a person has for his or her god. I believe in love in all its forms and that it is sacred wherever it is found and is true.

That's what I need to tell people who want me to go to church. With love. In love. My own. Not Christ's. I'm cutting out the middle man. I'm going it alone. With all these miracles and loves and leaves and light and music and words by my side.

And that's what I have to say today.
This gorgeous rain-washed day that fills me up with its light and its song and its green lizards and its soft air and its life, bursting forth renewed and ancient, all at the same time.
This day which has given me another opportunity to be who I am, the miracle of evolution, the daughter of all the mothers, the mother of all the daughters and sons, and as I go about this day with joy (because I am filled with joy today) I am going to think about all of these things and how dinosaurs had feathers and I will wonder what it would have been like to look at one of those mighty creatures, three-fingered and shimmering in the light of early days on earth in colors I can't imagine.

Because I don't know everything.

But I do know I don't need to go to church to hear about Jesus.

The wind carries me all the message I need, through the branches of the trees, from the blue waters of the Gulf, from the breath of the universe as it inhales and exhales its life to my sacred body, my profane and joyful heart.

Sour Lass

Wednesday, August 1, 2007

Sour Lass

So I went to get new glasses today. I have been wearing corrective lenses since the Lion's Club came to my school when I was in the third grade to test our vision and it was discovered that I could not see the largest E on the chart.
"Which way is the biggest E pointing?" asked the Lions Club Guy.
"What E?" I asked.
"Oh my," they said. "You might need glasses."
Well, in the third grade, I thought glasses were the coolest things in the world. Especially when I got some (blue plastic frames, quite stylish in 1963) and could see the individual leaves on the trees! Wowzer!
Of course in high school I got contact lenses, the better to be beautiful, and I put up with all that saline solution shit for many years, but eventually decided that I was lazier than I was vain, and went back to glasses. Having children had a lot to do with that decision. Mainly the fact that when the opportunity for a quick nap arose, I did not want to have to get up and go take my contacts out, wash them and put them in saline in their clever little holder. Etc.
So anyway, today's new glasses were the latest in a long, long line of new glasses experience for me and I think they're going to work out. It's not a new prescription. I didn't think I was going to get new glasses, just my old ones fixed, but when I went to the optical place (which I shall not name), they said that I could just get a whole new pair! Again- Wowzer! I could have fixed the glasses myself with a spot of super glue, but offered brand new ones, I felt I should take them. I never liked the broken ones that much anyway. And getting them had been a major hassle. Between doctor prescription mistakes and optical technician mistakes, it took me about three weeks and over half a dozen visits to get things straighted out to where I could actually see.
Now, my eyes are old. I have nearsightedness I have farsightedness and I have an astigmatism. So I can see why things might go awry in the glasses-making process. And go awry they did. Over and over and over.
Which would have been fine if the people at the optical place had apologized or taken responsibility for their mistakes.
But no. They did not.
I kept having to deal with this one chick. And maybe it's just our chemistry or something, but she and I were like oil and water. No, that's way too tame. We were like fire and gasoline. Yeah, that's more like it. She evoked an anger in me that was more powerful than the burning surface of the sun. She kept insinuating that there was nothing at all wrong with the way the lenses were being made, but that it was my particularly picky attitude about my vision that was at fault.
"It's hard to get used to progressive lenses," she kept saying. "You have to give it time."
"But it's been a week," I said, "And besides, this is like my third pair of glasses with progressive lenses."
"Hmmph," she'd say, flicking her blonde hair over her skeletal shoulder. This is a chick who (and there is no doubt about this) aspires to be Paris Hilton's twin. She does pretty well at that, too. Except she is about half as fat as Paris and does not have Paris's winning smile or so obvious charm.
And it goes without saying that I got my first pair of bifocals when Paris Lite was still learning that pee goes in the potty.
Anyway, after much struggle and a whole lot of restraint on my part, I got glasses that finally were okay. Not great, but I just could not face going back in that place again. I got used to them.
And I had remembered the difficulties that I went through, getting those glasses, but I had completely forgotten (blocked?) all about the girl who had raised my ire to the point of spontaneous combustion.
Until I went back in today and dealt with her again for about forty seconds.
This optical place has more than one branch and the one I'd gone into for the repair has nice people. Very nice people. And they were the ones who looked up my records and told me I could just pick out a new pair of frames if I wanted and get a whole new pair of glasses. For free! Now they didn't have any frames in the brand that I needed that I liked, so I went to the other branch. Which is where the Sour Lass works. And of course, she was the one who waited on me.
"Name?" she asked, sitting at the computer. I gave her the pertinent information and told her what they'd said at the nice location and she said, "Hmmph," and flipped her blond hair over her skeletal shoulder. "Let me call my manager."
Which she did. And kept saying "Well, she's here wanting a brand new pair of glasses." As if I had come in and demanded a brand new pair of glasses when all I thought I was asking for originally was a spot of glue or something. I mean, those people at the other location were the ones who offered the glasses to me! I kept trying to tell Paris Lite this while she was talking to her manager and she kept giving me the "Hmmph" look.
The manager okayed the new glasses, which I personally think pissed off P.L. "If you take them," she said, "You will be forfeiting any more repairs on this contract."
"When does the contract end?" I asked.
"September," she said.
Since it's August, I didn't think that was such a bad thing. What the hell?
So I picked out new frames and she kept asking if I was sure I liked them and reminded me that it's hard to get used to progressives and just generally annoyed me so damn much that I wanted to pop her head off. This is exactly what I was seeing in my mind's eye. Me popping her head off.
I also wanted to say to her, "Why in God's name would I listen to what you're saying about my vision when you obviously are so dense that you think people can't see where your real lip line is?"
But I didn't say this and I didn't pop her head off. I swear though, I came way too close for comfort. I had two of my daughters with me and by the time our exchange was over, they were cringing and people were starting to stare. And I'm not usually like this. I don't send food back in restaurants, I don't take things back to stores for ridiculous reasons, and I generally try to be as polite and gracious a human being as is possible.
But this girl...
Well.
It's weird to feel that sort of self-righteous indignation to the point where it's almost enjoyable. It makes me feel powerful in a twisted sort of way. I can feel myself getting to the point where I am going to start screaming. Doing what I've never done in my life- creating a real scene.
I really didn't know I had it in me until I met this one girl with very blond hair wearing a black pantsuit and pink lipstick that went way past her lips.
And I don't really have a point here. Just...wowzer.
And I'd say "Bless her heart," but frankly, for once, I just don't have it in me.

My Birthday

Hey there. I'm sneaking in a freshly written post. Well, okay. I'm writing it on July 20th and scheduling it to be published (PUBLISHED- HAHA!) on my birthday. I'm here, in Lloyd, but when you read this, if all goes as planned, I will be in Cozumel.
Time travel. Sort of.
And that picture is from a trip we took to Cozumel in 2003. So that was me, six years ago and I hope that today, my birthday, I have a similar evening. Sitting on a balcony, watching the sun set over the Caribbean sea, and being so incredibly happy and delighted with the colors and the drama of the sky as the sun sinks into the horizon that I am beyond words, my Virgin of Guadalupe candle beside me, the swallows darting around my balcony, and the smells of meat and garlic grilling wafting up from a kitchen, my husband within arms' reach. I hope that we have a plan for dinner and that I get up from the balcony when the sun has set and go in and braid my hair up and put on a dress and sparkly mermaid-colored eye shadow and my silver bracelets and we go out into the soft evening air to town and have something so delicious for supper that my eyes roll in pleasure and perhaps tequila will be involved.
Guacamole will be, most definitely.

Mr. Moon asked me the other day what I want for my birthday this year and I said, "For me to wake up on the day and not even know what day it is."
He knew exactly what I meant- that we would be so content with each moment of each day that we completely lose track of time. We have done that before on Cozumel, believe me. Our first trip there, we got to the airport an entire DAY late. Yes, we did.
And one time, I discovered that instead of us having two days left, we only had one and I didn't quit crying until days after we got home.

I am not making this up.

So that's what I hope for today (eight days from when I am writing this now, in Lloyd as the frogs croak and the night embraces my house, my trees, my world). That I wake up and don't even know it's my birthday. That perhaps as we are having breakfast of fruit and eggs and maybe even BACON, that I remember.

"Oh," I will say, as I take another sip of coffee, "I think it might be my birthday."
"Hmmm...." Mr. Moon will say. "What do you want to do today?"
And I will smile and say, "This."

And we will look out over the ocean and we will see people walking by with bags of limes and fish strung on palm frond stems and I will be so glad to be where I am on this, my fifty-fifth birthday with the sea in front of me and my love beside me and an entire day to dance through and a sunset to watch and a supper to eat, wearing silver bracelets, silver earrings and smiling with all my heart.

Here and There, Both Perfect

Friday, November 2, 2007

Here and There, Both Perfect

Some days are just so damn beautiful that they'll break your heart. Today has been one of those. One of those perfect fall days with cool air and sunlight pouring out of a blue sky to paint all the leaves in silver.
Ah. It's enough to just be alive today.
And as my son pointed out in his most recent blog Thursday's Child Has Far To Go at http://tallyhassle.blogspot.com/ , changes in the weather can throw us into deep nostalgia for places we've been, things we've done. Fall especially, I think, has a natural tendency to do that. It's a time when we start to draw into ourselves more, to think and to feel.
My son thinks of Atlanta when the weather turns cool but I think of Cozumel, Mexico. Sometimes, the brush of cool air, the way it smells on these early fall mornings, throws me completely back to that small island in the Caribbean where my husband and I have spent so many anniversaries. Our first trip there was in 1987 and since then, we've probably been back eight times. More or less. Mas o menos. I can close my eyes and see the little town of San Miguel, smell the garlic grilling as supper time approaches, feel the sidewalk under my feet, hear the sounds of mopeds, the waves hitting the shore, the bread man banging a metal pipe to announce his wares as he pedals his cart along the street, see the way the sea goes from green to blue to violet, all of it crystal clear, like a fabulous jewel, and I can taste the Ixnepech, the ubiquitous fresh salsa that tastes perfect on everything from the morning's eggs to the evening's fresh snapper. Most of all, I can see the Mayan people, small and brown and always smiling, ever-patient and gentle, always eager to talk about their island and their families, always curious about where we live, always eager to help in any way.
Cozumel is my magic place. It is the place in the world that besides my own home, I feel safest and most in love with my husband. Every one of our trips there has been a honeymoon. There isn't a whole lot to do beyond snorkle and explore and watch the sunset. And it's such a small island- thirty three miles long, eight and a half miles wide. It was sacred to the Mayan goddess Ixchel, who was the goddess of childbirth, the sea, the moon, seashells and weaving. Mayan women were expected to make a pilgrimage there during their lifetime and I guess I've made enough trips there for several lifetimes, but somehow, it's never enough.
I have to admit that the over the course of twenty years, the island has changed considerably, mostly due to the fact that it's become a port of call for cruise ships. Don't get me started on that subject. Just...don't...get...me...started.
When we first visited, it was still a sleepy place, a diver's destination, "discovered" by Jacques Cousteau. It was, and still is, a place where actual families lived, where people worked and lived and raised their children. And oh, what beautiful, so-obviously loved children!
But since the cruise ships have taken over, so much of the island seems geared to catch the folks vomited off those monstrous boats as they take their six hour shore leaves and sell them jewelry, cheap trinkets, Kahlua, and T-shirts, and send them back drunk on bad tequila. The cruisers love to eat at places they know so Ruby Tuesdays and Margaritaville do booming businesses while the restaurants that families own and which have served delicious meals to thousands for decades stand empty.
Oh yeah. I got started.
I'm sorry. That's not what I meant to write about. What I meant to write about is how this time of year, my heart yearns to go back there, cruisers or not, to feel that soft air blow over my body, to walk down the seafront and say "Buenos tardes" to the people we pass in the evening and to hear them say it back to me. I want to go to the Zocalo on Sunday night and watch the families dressed in their best, walk around the square and dance and eat and I want to hear their voices. I want to stand on a balcony with a drink of rum in my hand and my husband by my side to watch the sun go down. I want to hear the liquid notes of the Mexican blackbirds as they gather at dusk and call their contentment with the day. I want to watch the lights come on across the water at Playa del Carmen. I want to see images of the Virgin of Guadalupe everywhere and hear the street musicians play the Cozumel song.
I guess I want to make another pilgrimage and I know it won't happen this year.
But I know it's still there. I know that time and even cruise ships can't destroy all that magic.
But I yearn, oh how I yearn! Even as I am content to be exactly where I am, there is a part of me that is there, right now, this very second. That part is wearing a dress and silver earrings and she is discussing with her husband where they should eat their supper. She is smiling. Oh, how she is smiling! And she is happy.

Dearly Beloved

Tuesday, November 6, 2007

Dearly Beloved

Have you gotten your computerized call asking if you'd like to sign a petition to get a state constitutional amendment declaring that marriage is something that can only be entered into between a man and a woman in order to protect the sanctity of marriage?

I have.

Scary shit there.

I've never understood why a marriage between a man and a man, or a woman and a woman threatens my own marriage. I mean, no matter how hard I try, I just can't see any correlation between gay marriage and the downfall of straight marriage. I guess that if two married gay guys moved in next door and they looked like they were having so much fun that my husband decided to divorce me and find a man of his own, it might threaten me, but I don't think it would really be the fault of the guys next door.

Frankly, it would seem to me that straight people are doing a fine job of screwing up the sacred sacrament of marriage all on their own.


Another one of the arguments these nimrods use against gay marriage is that God created marriage between a man and a woman for the purpose of procreation. But we all know plenty of straight couples who enter into marriage with no intention whatsoever of having children. Are we going to tell that darling 84-year old gent and his 80-year old sweetheart who met in the nursing home that they can't be married because they can't have children? What about the couple who just knows in their hearts that they don't want kids? On the other hand, there are plenty of gay couples who desperately want children and who will (and do) make terrific parents, no matter how the babies come their way. So that argument surely doesn't work for me.

Another reason cited frequently for denying gay marriage is that if we let gay people marry each other, then the next thing you know, polygamy will be legal and then, oh, I don't know, so will marrying sheep or your cousin or your brother or something on that order. One thing will lead to another, as we know.

Which all sounds a bit daunting, at first thought, but then the more I think about it, the less I care who marries whom. Frankly, if all parties are consenting adults (and I do mean consenting and I DO mean adults) then why should I care? If some lucky guy can find eight women who want to marry him and he can be an adequate husband and father to the women and all the children he produces, who am I to stand in his way?
And although it sounds...icky...and on a really deep emotional level...wrong, if a brother and a sister want to be married, and if they get genetic counseling before they breed, again- why should I care?

Now as to the sheep thing- I don't think a sheep can be consenting nor can a German Shepherd or a chimpanzee, no matter how intelligent. So forget the whole animal thing.

Really.

So yeah, if legalizing gay marriage leads to other alternative types of marriage, I guess I don't really care. Again, I don't think it's going to affect my own marriage.
I've had people ask me to officiate at weddings and I have always been honored to do so. I have married maybe a dozen couples, some straight and therefore legally, some gay and therefore illegally, but my criteria has always been more about love than the law. I respect anyone who chooses to get up in front of friends and family and vow to make a life together out of love. It's such a universally human desire to be married and I think it's a human right. I don't know if I'd perform a marriage for a man and his sister or a woman and two men, but maybe, if I knew the folks and they seemed sincerely in love and sincerely dedicated to each other, I might.

Yeah, I'm weird.

But God's honest truth is, is that my marriage is not like yours, even if you are a woman married to a man. Every marriage is as different as the people in it and every couple (or whatever) finds their own way to share their hearts and their lives together. How your marriage works is none of my business and how mine works is none of yours. That marriage works at all is a miracle and I don't think the gender of the participants is a huge factor.

So, no, I don't care to sign that petition. But thanks for asking.

When There Are No Words

I went to see Lynn today. I knew it was going to be tough. Christmas- hell, she loved Christmas. She never had much money to buy presents but she'd find that one perfect thing to give, maybe tiny, but perfect. She loved the lights, the things she'd collected over the years to decorate with. She loved the cards and the songs and the colors and the tastes and the joy.

I remember the year her disease really started taking hold in a cruel way. She was still living in her house and a friend had brought her a tree and she got out all her decorations and then....
she couldn't figure out how to put the lights on or how to put her baubles and ornaments on. When I got to her house, she was crying. "How did I forget?" she wailed.

So I knew, between my own fragile state and the whole situation, it was going to be hard.

I went inside and she was parked in that spot all by herself in the hallway, next to the pay phone. I'd brought her some strawberry ice cream and I wheeled her outside to sit under the tree and I started feeding her the pink goop. She's sort of like a baby now - if you touch her lips, she opens her mouth. I fed her some and we sat and let the breeze blow over us and she was agitated. She kept trying to get out of the chair that she was tied to. I usually say something like, "Where are you going, girl? It's okay. Now settle down."

Today all I could do was pat her. It's not okay and I wasn't in the mood to lie about it or try to make it any better than it is.

There's a guy who works there named Lee Roy, who likes to come and talk to me and he came out to change a light bulb that blew in the rain last night. We got to talking, as usual, and then he asked me, "Did you know her before she was like this?"

That was all it took. The dam broke. I started sobbing.

"Oh yeah," I said. And then I tried to tell him what Lynn used to be like. I used words like "Hardest working woman you ever met," and "Oh, my, she loved to dance," and "She loved music so much."

"We can't understand these things," he said. "Only the man upstairs. As we get older, all will be revealed."

I listened politely while I fed my friend like a baby, one spoonful of cold, sweet, pink ice cream after another, but I was mad. Mad at God, mad at whatever evilness had caused my friend to get sick. Eventually, I said, "Yeah, well, all that works better if you believe in the man upstairs." I wouldn't normally say anything like that, but I did today. Lee Roy had tried to make me feel better and it did nothing for me. Not one damn thing. If there is a God, then what the hell is he thinking? There's so much suffering going on in this world that I can't even begin to fathom it. I can't even fathom what Lynn suffers and I'm sitting right there watching it.

He knew how I was feeling and soon took off to go do another chore and I sat with Lynn some more. "I'm sorry, baby," I said to her. "All I have in me is to sit with you some today." I held her hand while I cried, and although usually I don't even think she knows where her hand is, today she pulled my hand to her mouth and kissed it.

I broke down again and when she grew more agitated, I took her back inside to see if I could find a nurse to give her the medication to calm her down.

I kissed her to tell her good-bye when I was leaving and she kissed me back, which she hasn't done in forever, which caused me to cry even harder. The nurse, seeing my distress, asked me several times if I was all right.

I said I was, although that was a lie. She said she'd give her her meds and there was another employee there who really seems to care a lot for Lynn and he said he'd take care of her and so I left.

On my way out, I looked out for Lee Roy, hoping to see him to tell him that I appreciated the fact that he'd tried to make me feel better. His wanting to make me feel better had helped, even if his words hadn't.

But I didn't see him and there was nothing for it but to get in my car and drive away.

Not A Poser

Friday, November 14, 2008

Not A Poser

I was in yoga class this morning in child's pose, which is one of my favorite poses because it's a resting pose and damn, who doesn't love a resting pose?

I was sleeveless today as it's gotten quite warm here again and I was enjoying the way everything in yoga felt, as if all my body parts were crying out, Yes, Yes, Yes! Thank you for paying us some attention here. Thank you for stretching, thank you for reaching, thank you for breathing! and I was happy. The rain was pouring down outside and we could hear it and see it from the cozy room we were in and we've been so dry here lately and it all just felt like a blessing, being there, doing what my body wanted, listening to the rain.

And then I made the mistake of turning my head in child's pose and catching a glimpse of my arm.

Oh my god. Oh dear. Oh shit. What the fuck???!!

The inside part of my upper arm was, well, I don't really know how to describe this. And let me insert right here that I do have muscles in my arms. They're not completely flabby or wing-like. But. Oh dear. But.
The flesh, how shall I say this? Was hanging in wrinkles and the meat of my arm was in something like blobs within that hanging, wrinkly flesh.

Now let me tell you that if I had seen this vision of body-aging just five years ago, or perhaps even five months ago, I would have shot up from child's pose into adult's horror pose and started screaming.

As it was, and as it is, I did nothing except to take note of the further degeneration of the flesh and continue on with what I was doing. I am not exactly inured to such horrifying (and seemingly sudden) changes in my body, but I am no longer as shocked as I used to be.

I feel certain that I've said this before, but it's worth repeating: When I was young(er), I would look at older women and the way that gravity had fought and won with their flesh and I would think Thank God that will never happen to me. Now why I thought that, I have no idea. Did I really believe that I, and I alone, would escape the ravages of aging? Or did I think I would be one of those who died young and left a gorgeous corpse?

I don't know. But either way, it was faulty thinking.

But here's the kicker: Inside, in my mind, and even in my body, I feel hardly different than I did twenty years ago back when my flesh was firm and unwrinkled. I am more flexible now than I was then and in some ways, stronger. I eat better, I exercise more, I am leaner. And so it's easy to forget (especially if I only look at my face in the mirror with my glasses off) that I am indeed aging and looking like it too.

So when I catch the flesh doing something decidedly old-womanly or I see a picture of myself wherein my neck is doing that thing, that wrinkly thing, I am kicked rudely out of denial and must face the facts.

The facts being that it's only going to get worse.

Sigh.

Well, they always say you're only as old as you feel, which in my case is about thirty-four. Until, that is, I am given a visual reminder of the truth. And then I feel like Nora Ephron who wrote that book, I Feel Bad About My Neck, because I do. I almost feel as if I must apologize.

Sorry, y'all. I meant to wear my real face and body but for some reason, I can't locate them. I've looked everywhere! Please forgive me. I'm sure I'll find them soon.

But I won't. I will never find them because they are not here any more. They are gone and gone forever. I can no more aspire to be this:



Than I can to be this:



But I can aspire to be this:



Which is not that bad. In fact, it's pretty wonderful.

And I do. I aspire to be that.

That strong, that beautiful, and apologizing to no one.

A Memory, Tagged

Sunday, February 1, 2009

A Memory, Tagged (click on the pictures to make them big)

Jon, over at Website De La Illiteratei, has been tagged in one of those bloggie games and in this one, you go to where you keep your photos on your computer, open the fourth album or folder, then open the fourth picture in it.
Simply because it piqued my curiosity, I went to my iPhoto's, opened the fourth album and opened the fourth picture. It brought back so many memories I wanted to post it.



The name of the album it came from is Cozumel 2003. And I remember the day we got on our rented scooter and drove down to where this picture was taken but I couldn't remember the name of the beach or the bar or the sweet, sweet fellow we met that day so I got out my old journal from that trip and I opened it up.
Here's part of an entry from from that day, 10/27/03:

We went to Palencar beach and a guy named Fernando talked to us, Glen mostly, about fishing and he showed us a crocodile and also birds behind a fence and in cages. Parrots, parakeets, turkeys, chickens, peacocks. We ate some shrimp quesadillas and guacamole.
The water was beautiful.

And it was. Here's a picture of that:



And the crocodile:




I remembered that we went back a few days later and Glen dove with Fernando. I don't scuba so I laid on the beach and swung in a hammock and read and dozed and when the fellas came back off the water, we ate lunch and there were pictures taken then, too.
Here's Fernando, playing with one of the parrots:



How beautiful is that man? Well, boy. But still. The Maya on Cozumel (and I cannot speak for the Maya everywhere) are the most peaceful and kind folks I think I have ever met as a group. In all of my many trips, I've never seen the slightest act of violence or even discord among them, either the children or adults, although I am not under the delusion that it does not happen.
But still, I've never seen it.
During my times on the island I've seen plenty of weird and violent behavior but always from the tourists and inevitably the American ones. But the Maya display an almost saintly attitude towards the tens of thousands of tourists disgorged upon their shores, even the cruisers who have five or six hours to shop at the cruise line approved stores, eat at the cruise line approved restaurants and drink at the cruise line approved bars.
Believe me, there is vomiting involved. And bad behavior. And ugly behavior. There is an art to bargaining. Most Americans do not have it.

But no matter how many times we go back, and how many changes we see on the island, the one thing that seems to remain the same is the people and their gentle, humorous spirits. They will stop to help you if you appear to need help. They will volunteer to show you things on their island they are proud of. They beam when you compliment their children. They will remember what you drink, what you put in your coffee and if you go back often enough, they will remember your name and your story.

And I remember them.

Here's a picture of me and Fernando from that first day we met him:



And how could you forget a smile like that? A profile like the one in the picture of him with the parrot? The first time I ever went to Cozumel I felt as if I had been dropped into a living version of the National Geographic Magazine with noses and profiles and eyes all around me just like the ones on the pages National Geographic that I had studied all my life; the pictures of the paintings on the walls of the ancient ruins of the Maya. These people never disappeared. They live on and have babies and fish and love and smile. They share their stories, they share their knowledge and their skills and their jokes. They are living their lives.

Here's another entry from that journal. It's a poem and not a good one, but here it is:

The water is flat tonight
But the wake from the dive boats
Who are speeding across
In and out
Leave wakes which slap the shore
The breast of Cozumel Island.
These Maya are as comfortable on the water
As in their mama's laps.
We met a boy named Fernando Conrado Silviera
Whose mother told him that
He was born
On a boat
With his mask and fins on
And a regulator in his mouth.
She's probably right.
The water, the water, the water
The sky
Blue, blue, blue and green.
The only way I can give this up
Is knowing
That it will be here
When I return
And that the Maya
Will be here too.
Speeding across the water
And living beside the water
Under their Caribbean
Mayan sky.

The next day I wrote a better poem. The picture I have to go with it we did not take but the place it was taken is a place we did visit, which was Chichen Itza where we hired a guide, a man half MY size who was so serious about what his people (and that's how he referred to them- my people) had accomplished, had created and who had so much to tell us and show us that he was impatient with Mr. Moon who kept wanting to stop and take pictures.

Anyway, here is my poem and here is a picture of Chac Mool, the Mayan deity whose hands hold a bowl in which the beating hearts of sacrificial victims were placed:

Chac Mool might as well be holding his hands out
For my heart.
Here, you crazy God, you bloody boy.
Just go ahead and receive it.
It's yours.

These memories. They are so sweet. And because I have the journal out and because it's a beautiful day here in Lloyd but my heart has been thrown back in time to that island, here's one more thing I wrote during that trip while I was on the beach in a coconut grove while Mr. Moon dove beneath those blue, blue, blue green waters with Fernando:

I wish I could cut my hair, get Ixchel tattoed on one shoulder, the map of Cozumel on the other, go home changed physically because I am changed inside.
Again.

And then on the last night, at sunset, I wrote this:

Why do the tiny swallows cry out
Except to say
I am alive again
And there is food in the air?

There is food in the air of that island for me. It has filled my heart to bursting so many times.
Thanks, Jon, for giving me a reason, no matter how unintended, to go back in my mind to revisit the place that has always filled my heart, my soul.



Cozumel.

Here We Go

All right then, y'all. I'm packed. Except for my pillow (which goes with me everywhere) and my make-up (I'm going to put on make-up to make the journey!) and my toothbrush and shampoo and conditioner, I am packed.
I think.
It's been a beautiful day. A woman I used to take care of as a child called me today. I haven't talked to her in over twenty years. And she told me that she has taken me wherever she has gone, all these years- to the Everglades, to France, and now back to North Georgia- and that I have had an influence on her entire life.
Well now THERE's a paycheck.
I am reveling in those words.

Okay, so listen- my kids (if you are new to me) write. Oh yeah, they write. They write like demons and angels. Here are their sites:

Mr. Hank at http://tallyhassle.blogspot.com/
Miss Maybelle at http://rolluptherugs.blogspot.com/blogspot.com/
And Miss Jessie at http://findingthosedulcettones.

My other daughter, Lily, is busying working, buying a house and creating a baby within her own personal uterus.

But the kids have told me that they might blog about what it's like to be at Mama's house when she's gone. And believe me- it'll be worth reading. So put them in your reader, become one of their followers, check out their words. Because they are amazing. And I ain't just saying that because I'm their mama. Visit them, decide for yourself.

And oh yes- maybe they'll talk about the chickens.

I am going to miss all of you so damn much I can hardly bear it.
But I have been offered a special mission (which I have so very gratefully accepted) to step and shimmy and shiver and shake and walk like an Egyptian (or maybe a Mayan) down the streets and beaches of Cozumel with my husband.

Twelve hours from right now we'll be taking off for Atlanta where we'll catch the plane to paradise.

I've painted my fingernails red. I've packed the books and prunes and skirts and t-shirts and white linen dreses and silver bracelets.

And did you see our president tonight? Damn.

Bless us all.

Love...Ms. Moon

You Know I Had To Say Something

Charlie Crist, Florida's preternaturally tanned and preternaturally married governor desperately wants to be the next Republican candidate for president.

In that spirit, he is fighting the right of gay parents in Florida to adopt. Florida has the only outright ban on gay parents adopting in the nation, by the way. And also, by the way, gay folks can be foster parents and are even recruited for such by the Florida Department of Children and Families.

And of course, there is a, uh, rumor, that the Gov himself may be personally acquainted with the "gay lifestyle" as it were, although there is that wife- whom he married in a big fat hurry during the days when he was on McCain's short list of possible VP candidates. Of course, Sarah Palin got that nod and we all saw how well that little clusterfuck worked for McCain.

Anyway, back to Crist- not only is he fighting gay adoption, he's against the nomination of Sotomayor. I'm not sure how that's going to serve him in a state with a HUGE Hispanic population but he's not worried so much about Florida voters as he is being a gung-ho Republican at the moment.

And all I have to say is- Charlie- Cowboy up, Cupcake. Do the right things.

Oh but wait- that would mean he'd have to prove he has some balls.
And it would also mean that he wasn't a very good politician, not to mention a very good Republican. Hmmm...truth and honesty and doing what's right for our children and our nation, OR, staking out a place in the very middle of that really vast Republican tent.

He's got his camp stool and there he sits, just waiting for the country to ring his phone, call him to a higher purpose and wondering where in the White House he'd have that tanning bed installed.

I hate politics. I truly do.

What I Am Leaving

Crappy stupid phone pictures but still, there you have it.
My babies. And one of the babies with a baby.
We went to lunch yesterday after HoneyLuna's appointment with the knee doctor who talked mostly about his basketball career. "I coulda been a contenda!" he might as well have said, "But I went to medical school instead."
Well. Good for you, Doc. Good for you. Now do you really know how to operate on knees because this is MY baby and HER knee and she needs it for a lifetime.

Please dear Mother-Of-Us-All, please dear Light-And-Love, take care of my babies while I'm gone. I have to say that, even if they're all old enough to take care of themselves because in leaving them, I am leaving my heart.

Different Day, Different Way

See that? That was the temperature here on my little kitchen porch at seven thirty this morning. Sixty-five degrees? On July 21? No-fucking-way.
And yet, there you are.
I slept with the window open last night and the AC off. On July 21st. This is craziness! And it's so beautiful. The humidity can't be above fifty per cent which is like the Sahara for us. Unbelievable.
And this cool dry air is undoing the little tropical wave that was forming and perhaps heading to the Caribbean and so I don't have to worry (for this moment) about a hurricane hitting Cozumel about the same time we do.
If we create our own realities, I'm doing a heckofa job, Brownie!

We leave day after tomorrow. Am I ready? No-fucking-way.
I've got a list a mile long for today. I'm meeting up with Jessie to take her to the orthopedic doctor to see what's up with that knee. I need to buy chicken feed. I need to get my antidepressant refilled. I need books. I NEED BOOKS! And I need to go to the library to take books back. I need cat food and camera batteries and wasp spray. Boy. Do I need wasp spray.

Instead of dreaming last night that I was in a dumpy motel in Vegas, I dreamed I was at a high school reunion. Yeah. I know. Should have been a nightmare. My last actual one was. Well, at least the part where that really strange geeky guy from our class started trying to feel up all the girls he'd never even had the guts to ask out and Mr. Moon was suddenly seven-foot-ten instead of his usual six-foot-ten and was going to take the guy outside by the ears and kick his ass. "Don't do it!" I pleaded. "It's not worth it!"
He didn't but it was scary there for a minute.
Anyway, the dream I had last night was sweet. And in a way, I was the perpetrator of unrequited passion. Well, it was a mutual thing- I was kissing all the boys I'd never kissed in high school. Sweetly and innocently. I swear. The cute, quiet boys whose smiles I still must have tucked in my pocket somewhere. And someone had left a baby (there's always a baby) and she was cold and I dressed her warmly and held her to me while the reunion was going on. And then she was fine.

So this morning I feel cool and calm and excited to go on my trip with my sweet husband whom I shall kiss tens of thousands of times. Sometimes sweetly and innocently and sometimes, well, not so innocently. And we'll hold hands! We'll be the sweet old couple who holds hands! I love to hold hands, even though when I hold Mr. Moon's hand I sort of look like a child with her daddy. So what?

And last night I prescheduled a bunch of old posts to magically appear while I'm gone. There is no rhyme or reason to them. Some are funny, some are not. I was going to get the kids to guest blog but it seemed to be weighing heavily on them and I don't want to distract them from taking care of my chickens while I'm gone. So you get the summer reruns. Hell, if it's good enough for TV, it's good enough for blessourhearts.

And there you have it.

Oh- here's a poem I got today off the Prairie Home poetry e-mail I get daily. I think it's advice we can all take:

	Advice to Young Poets by Martin Espada The Republic of Poetry) -- Never pretend to be a unicorn by sticking a plunger on your head

And here's a picture of one of my lady banana spiders and her little man. Isn't she lovely?

She'll be a lot bigger when I get home. And her husband may or may not be there depending just how bad her PMS gets.
All will be revealed.

Love....Ms. Moon

I Love This Man

Click on the picture for article.

She's Home

And Buster is mighty glad.
(So's her mama and daddy.)

Trying To Imagine. Trying So Hard.

And then today, I wake up and I've had that dream. No. Not the flying off the bridge in a car dream. Not the sleeping behind the wheel dream. Not the losing my baby dream.
The dream where my husband doesn't love me. Doesn't care a thing about me. Oh. It was horrible. We were on vacation- Las Vegas. In the dumpiest, dirtiest hotel in the world and it wasn't romantic and it was awful because I had wanted it to be a vacation of joy but he didn't care.

And Frank McCourt has died, you know. I refused to read Angela's Ashes for years (who wants to read about one dead baby after another?) and then I got 'Tis on tape and he was the narrator and I was hooked. I listened to Angela's Ashes and Teacher Man and his voice was so strong, so sure and he told his stories of such pathos with tenderness and even humor. How? How can the human spirit be that strong?

I am just going through pre-vacation anxiety. I still have so much to do and we leave in three days and here I am, drowned in a bad dream and its left-over sorrow. Jessie is home, she is home! and safe and I'll see her today, most likely and I need to start packing today. See what I can take and what I should leave. Try to imagine myself walking and swimming and snorkling and being happy. Try to imagine myself being happy. It's so hard for me even to go to town- how do I imagine getting on an airplane flying away so far from my porch, my chickens, my babies? How do I imagine being romantic and beautiful when the thought of where to pack my shampoo and what sort of carry-on to take and even what to wear on the plane makes me crazy and inert?
How?
And don't tell me it's crazy to worry about those things- I KNOW IT!

Hank and May came out yesterday and I showed them where all the chicken feed is and how to deal with the birds and the garden and the porch plants. But yellow jackets have taken up residence in the dirt of my front porch plants and you can't even go out there, much less water them without being stung by those damn aggressive things. They boil out of the dirt like angry demons and they find you and they sting you and they follow you as you curse and run, flinging your hair this way and that, flinging your arms and being stung. It feels like tiny needles of electric shock when they hit you with their stingers and then you swell up and itch. And hurt.
Another thing I'll leave behind for someone else to deal with. Or not deal with.

Mr. Moon finished up some of the nesting boxes for the chickens and we even decorated the hen house. We are insane. We strung Christmas lights. They have a sound system.
My chickens live in a better house than many third-world children. Lucille, one of the smaller chickens, got into the big pen yesterday. She jumped out while Mr. Moon was cutting a board and my hens (my sweet, sweet hens) attacked her. Mr. Moon saved her and those hens were only doing what they're supposed to which is to protect their living quarters, but it does not bode well for the mixing of the flocks.
Another thing to leave behind.

We went out last night to see them roosting and they are so passive when they roost. We held them and stroked them and Red and Mable were even roosting up on the tilted tin roof coverings over the nesting boxes which Mr. Moon had put up so they wouldn't poop in the boxes.




I fried fresh bream and I made hushpuppies. I cut up cucumbers and I made stewed tomatoes.
Sometimes I think my routines are the only things keeping me from flying off the planet.



I am about to fly off, if not the planet, then at least the ground. And what will keep me from flying apart? Why does my brain work this crazy way? Why do have I have dreams like that when my husband builds nesting boxes and puts the straw in them and makes them cozy for our chickens, our chickens? and he works so hard to make it possible for Lily and Jason and their baby to have a nest of their own and he shows me in every way that he loves me, he loves this life of ours?

I curse this crazy brain sometimes. As if it were not me, but some entity, entirely separate from "me" whoever that is. Why does it insist on telling me the sky is falling, the sky is falling as if I were some chicken thinking that a falling leaf is part of the sky and that I need to run for cover when really, everything is fine, is lovely, is all the best and better than I ever could have dreamed it? Ever? Why does it take my blessings and twist them into fears?

I don't know. But it does and that's who I am and I just have to pack and get on the plane and imagine flying over the blue sea and then, there it is- the Yucatan, all jungle and hidden pyramids and then the island, there, it rises out of the Caribbean, that blue and green clear water and that tiny island, growing bigger and bigger, waiting to welcome me.
Which me will it welcome?
Whichever me walks off that plane. With my husband who does love me and reminds me to love myself as I love him.

Cozumel has been named The Island of Peace - the first ever island designated as such. My little island.
I hope my heart will be at peace there. This crazy heart, this crazy, crazy old lady heart and today I'll figure out (I will!) what to take and what to leave. Michelle says "if if doesn't serve you, let it go," and craziness- it does not serve me.
I pray, I hope, I want to leave it behind.

Frank McCourt was proof that humans can bend and bend and bend under the weight of unbearable sorrows and can still stand, can even stretch so far that the world hears your voice.

I try to imagine that and it helps.

My Kitchen Door Toad (Please click the pictures to appreciate his full beauty.)

Grover's Corners

Last night Herb and Kathleen picked me up and we drove through the quiet early evening past mansions on hills and sharecropper cabins and pine trees and fields of corn and cotton and swamps and woods and when we got to Thomasville we ate a delicious supper and then went downtown to see a production of Our Town, which is a play by Thornton Wilder, which was published in 1957.

Here's what Mr. Wilder wrote about his play:

"It is an attempt to find a value above all price for the smallest events in our daily life. I have made the claim as preposterous as possible for I have set the village against the largest dimensions of time and place."

I was excited to see the play, having been in a production of it myself back in oh? 1971 or so, I suppose. I played Emily, the girl whose life is most closely followed in the three acts. And as the lights went down and the Stage Manager came on to tell about life in Grover's Corners, the small New Hampshire town where the play is set, I settled down in my seat to listen and watch and try to remember the person I'd been when I was in that play. It's such a gentle play. There are no props beyond several chairs, two ladders, two tables. It's timeless and quiet. There are no loud passions until the end, and then they are merely the longings of a woman who has died for the ordinary things of "clocks ticking...Mama's sunflowers. And food and coffee. And new-ironed dresses and hot baths....and sleeping and waking up. Oh earth," Emily says, "You're too wonderful for anybody to realize you."

She looks at the Stage Manager and says, "Do any human beings ever realize life while they live it? - every, every minute?"

The Stage Manager says, "No." He pauses. "The saints and poets, maybe- they do some."

And it hit me that My God! I have spent my entire life trying to find Grover's Corners. I have spent my entire life trying to be one of those saints or poets who tries to realize life every minute I live it. That philosophy is so very much like the one Garrison Keillor talked about when he said that he realized that he was to live an ordinary life, as most of us do, and that, THAT is enough.

And isn't that what this blog is? Isn't that what I write about here? The very things that Emily talked about in the play? Gardens and coffee and baths, love and marriage, and going to sleep and waking up? I don't have a man who delivers milk in the morning but my children call their daddy Papa sometimes. They know, like Emily knew, how much their Papa loves them. How much their Mama loves them.

And I thought about the irony of me playing that role- that of a young girl, falling in love, having a family who loves and cherishes her while I was living such a different life. Oh yes, I was falling in love, but my family- well, it is very telling that one night after we finished the play I was so happy and so in love with life and the boy I was with and I was expecting to go home to an empty house but found that my stepfather had unexpectedly come home early- a man I feared and loathed with all my heart, soul, bones and blood- and my moment of happiness turned into a night of something just this side of terror, knowing he was beyond my door which did not lock.
Back in May, I wrote about that night here.

And now, after seeing the play again last night, I feel quite certain that I would not be the person I am today, would not have the very life I have today, if I had not played Emily in high school. The words I said in that play may not have meant to me what they mean to me now, but I had an inkling already. I had an inkling that the life I was living then, the house I was living in then, the family I had then, was not the way it was supposed to be but that there was hope that I could find (create?) that life if I wanted to. That small human life where the simple pleasure of going to sleep and waking up was not overshadowed and ruined with terror.

And so I have. This small, ordinary life where a cup of coffee is a celebration, where going to sleep is a daily joy, where food is so important, where I know that life is too precious for most of us to understand but that I try. I try to acknowledge and even write about those small daily joys that are more than we humans can know.

It took me a long time to get to this life I lead now. So many struggles and false paths and ego battles and healings and breaking aparts and coming back together again within my self, my life. I had to reknit the very bones of my being before I could settle into this Grover's Corners existence I live. And I am sure that reknitting will never be done, but it is work I love, just as I love this life I lead.

The play ends when the Stage Manager says, "There are the stars- doing their old, old crisscross journeys in the sky. Scholars haven't settled the matter yet, but they seem to think there are no living beings up there. Just chalk...or fire. Only this one is straining away, straining away all the time to make something of itself. The strain's so bad that every sixteen hours everybody lies down and gets a rest. Hm...Eleven o'clock in Grover's Corners. - You get a good rest, too. Good night."

The dead sit in their graves pondering the stars and letting loose of the lives they lived, and the living lie down to rest.

And here I am, in the Grover's Corners of my little world, and it's so beautiful today. It's cool and the sun is out and everything is growing and green and I can hear chickens clucking and there's a cup of coffee at hand and I am not a saint and I am not a poet, but I played Emily once and what I said as her so many years ago I have discovered is part of the most important dialogue I speak daily.

You never know. You just never know.

But I know this- playing Emily thirty-seven years ago might have saved my life.
I wish Thornton Wilder was still alive so I could tell him that. I was good in that play. Very good. And I think it's because even though I was only seventeen and didn't really yet know how very precious the smallest things are, I knew that they should be and with all the yearning in my heart for a life that was not filled with terror and fear and complications of the sort that can shrivel a soul I said those words of Emily's and because of that, I said them well.

I am so grateful that those words found themselves into my mouth to repeat over and over again as we rehearsed, as we performed. Enough for me to internalize them, even as I thought I had forgotten them. Which has led to this. This small, ordinary, precious life I have.

Which is so far more than enough I can't begin to tell you.

Things I Saw When I Went Shopping Today

Funniest:

A t-shirt at the Goodwill which read, "It's not going to lick itself!"
(No. I did not buy it.)

Most ridiculous:

A book at the Goodwill with the title (or something like it) Hassle-Free Traveling With Children.

Sweetest:

My driveway.

Saturday With Pictures And Words

Saturday morning and it's raining in Lloyd. No thunder or lightening, no dramatics, just a rain falling from a gray sky.

Mr. Moon has gone off for the day and night to fish at Lake Seminole with an old buddy of his. It just struck me that wouldn't it be funny if Mr. Moon actually had a girlfriend and was really and truly going off with her instead of up to Lake Seminole with Randy? Or RA-Andy as I call him? Because that's how Randy talks. He, like most southerners, likes words so much he gives them as many syllables as possible.
Well, I don't think Mr. Moon has a girlfriend although he is very partial to Elmira.

I'm thinking about Jessie a lot. She should be done with the rural clinic work portion of her journey and now in the all-inclusive beach resort part. She was looking forward to that- the all-you-can-eat, the all-you-can-drink part.
"Now don't you come home pregnant," I told her when we were discussing the food, the drinks, the very handsome Men of Jamaica whom I hear are like gods, walking the beach barefoot with glistening muscled bodies, their twinkling eyes, their Rasta talk, their dreads and spliffs.
She giggled.
I should definitely hear from her by tomorrow when she will arrive back in Miami. I can't wait to hear her voice, that giggle.

Tonight I'm going up to Thomasville, Georgia with Herb and Kathleen to see a production of Our Town that our friend, Rich is in. I'm looking forward to this. I played Emily (the star!) in a community theater production of Our Town when I was in high school. It was a beautiful play, a wonderful role. I remember being fitted for my costumes. I remember the gentle dialogue, the bare stage with only chairs and a ladder as props. Someday, before I'm too old, I'd love to play Emily's mother in a production.
"Am I pretty?" Emily asks her mother.
And I don't remember the mother's lines but they are something like this:
"You'll do."
I miss acting right now. It's not the time for me to be in a play but I miss it. I'll go back to it soon enough, when my grandchild is safely born and no one needs me in any special way. I miss the Opera House and dream of it almost nightly.
But tonight I'll sit in the audience and I'll remember those characters, those lines. It'll be good.

The redheaded baby boy was released into foster care yesterday awaiting the end of the criminal investigation of his abandonment. Criminal. Well, I've already had my say about that. He weighed 7 lbs., 11 oz., which is a good weight for a baby boy. I still get so sad, thinking of his mother. Because he's white and healthy and a "cutie" as the paper reported, there will be people waiting in line to adopt him so that's good. Good for him, good for the people who adopt him. Sorrow for the woman who is still bleeding from his birth, whose breasts are full of milk, not knowing that the baby the milk is being produced for is being fed by someone else from a bottle.

I read something else in the paper yesterday that struck me as so weird. It was just a little puff piece on a local Catholic school written by a parent whose children attend it. She just happens to be Catholic herself but she was trying to reassure parents who might not be Catholic that they too, might want to consider sending their children to the school. She talked about how, when it came time for First Communion ceremonies, even the little girls who didn't receive the Holy Eucharist were able to participate in the fun, wearing their little white bride dresses, being excited. What's up with that? If the girls dress like brides, does that symbolize their marriage to Christ? What about the little boys? Who are they symbolically marrying? And do they all get excited to be able to cannibalize Christ? Hmmmm....
Does any seven or eight-year old understand what all this frufra means? Do any of us?
"Here. Eat of my body, drink of my blood."
We all love a good vampire story.
Poor little non-Catholic girls who only get the dress and veil, not the body and blood.
The writer made sure to stress that no nuns or priests were teachers at the school. Why did she feel the need to state that?
History, people. History.

Well, it's still raining. I have made no point. I have no point. I am pointless.
Here are some pictures of Lloyd and maybe, looking at them, you'll see where my ennui comes from, my lack of motivation for the day, my reflective mood, my contentment with all of that.

Rain on miniature roses, maidenhair fern, black elephant ears:


Baby chicks, racing to tear up and eat the collard greens:


Okra coming up:


Five-foot tall collard plants which I haven't ripped up because the chickens love the tough, buggy leaves:


Edamame beans, swelling in their pods:


The frogs are trilling in the swamp behind the railroad tracks, the birds are calling as if the rain was of no matter to them at all and there are two cardinals on the feeder right now.

The sky is giving rain. The earth is receiving it and so there is a sort of perfection and I am witness to all of it.

Sorry, Ms. Bastard

I am feeling very multiple-personalitied today. And that's okay! I sort of like it! I think I'm big enough for all the people in me and also, they're all in a good mood.

I went to yoga this morning and then I did something SO girly that I had to immediately go buy some pearly pink nail polish and also, I discussed Grandmotherhood with a woman whose granddaughter is her joy in life which reminded me of how joyful MY life is about to become with a grand child in it and made me feel a little grandmotherly myself and also, I just read Ms. Sarcastic Bastard's last post so my motherfucking ass is wanting to talk like her motherfucking ass does and maybe discuss German men wearing ugly ass Speedos that don't cover up their junk.
Whoa!
And of course I just went out to visit my chickens and give them some canteloupe and talk to them like this (in a highpitched voice, of course): Hey my ladies! How are my lovely ladies? Where is everyone? Mama has a treat for you! Etc. Etc. Then I told them how beautiful they are and I called them every one by name. Now that person is is probably the real me- the crazy batshit old Chicken Lady- but whatever.

What I did which was so girly was to go get a pampering facial. YES! YES! YES! Kathleen gave me a gift certificate for it for my birthday to help me get back in the girly mode before I leave for Mexico and it was nothing short of wonderful. The woman who did the facial was, well, she's a character and I already love her. Her name is Katie. She told me about how she works in her yard, wearing a bathing suit and a tank-top and how yesterday she mixed topsoil and sand and horse shit and mulch all together to make a soil for some pineapples she's planting. The conversation started like this, "Yesterday I realized I was out of dirt."
Uh- huh. And I knew exactly what she meant.
She also told me about the pot bellied pig which she used to have which lived in the house with her and her husband, whom the pig hated, and how she would take the pig to the nursing home to cheer up the old people. That pig was potty-trained!
"She was a gluttonous animal!" Katie cheerfully announced while describing to me how she would get the pig to sit on command with the aid of Cheetoes.
She also told me that her feet get so dirty she has to soak them in Oxyclean before she can get a pedicure. I'm going to try that.
But after we talked for awhile, sharing yard and animal and grandmother stories (she was the grandmother I talked to) she said, "Now I'm going to shut up and let you relax and boy, I did. It was heaven. Just heaven. The hands in the paraffin, the warmers on the hands and feet, the shoulder and arm and "decolletage" massage, the hands and feet massages. I'm about to go to sleep thinking about it.
I was lying there thinking that this probably did nothing at all for my skin but glory hallelujah! what it did for my soul.
I even let her wax my eyebrows! This is a first for me and I hope I look a bit less beasty.

Anyway, I stumbled out of there an hour and a half later, literally in tears of happiness, and barely able to walk. I yawned my way through the Winn Dixie where I bought canning lids and the CVS where I bought the pearly pink nail polish. Billy called me when I got home and I told him about the pearly pink nail polish. "It's so girly!" I announced gleefully.
"Yeah, maybe," he said. "But probably not too...uh, sexy."
Well. Billy will tell me truth and that's why I love him so very much.

And so that's what I've done today. Being all happy and girly and getting pampered. Although I have to admit that in yoga I was internally grumbling the whole entire time and was stiff as an old man to boot. An old German man, wrinkled like a mother-fucking Shar Pei and my ass is not lying.
At least I wasn't wearing a Speedo. My junk was hidden, Motherfuckers!

All right. I better go do something grandmotherly now. Actually, what I need to do is pop the seals on all the pickles I made last night and redo the brine with is more boring and less tasty than that Good Seasons Italian Dressing mix shit. You know the shit I'm talking about, Motherfuckers. Your Moms made it for you when you were a kid. You ate that shit up because you didn't know any better.

Or wait. I think I'm talking about me.

Oh well. This ass is out of here.

Happy Friday, y'all.
Love....Ms. Moon (And all the people inside of her.)

Okay, Okay. Dill Pickles

This is a recipe from the Joy of Cooking. I do not know which edition because all of the front and back pages are gone. It was a paperback edition and might I advise you, if buying a cookbook you intend to use for life, to get the hardback? The book not only has no cover or many of its pages, it is also in two volumes now. As in, it broke in half.

So these pickles are the ones I've been making since vinegar was invented. They are NOT the best dill pickles in the world but they are the ones I make and my family likes them. They are not especially crisp. They are also relatively easy to make. I am copying the recipe as it is written and if I've added any words of my own, they will be in RED and in parentheses.

Dill or Kosher Dill Pickles

About 7 pints

This dill pickle-making procedure differs from that for long-brined pickles. The brine is weaker
and the curing more rapid; but the pickles do not keep as well, especially if home-processed. We suggest using a heated brine. (And you knew it would be impossible for me to keep my big mouth out of this but I have found they keep just fine.) Garlic, like all members of the onion family, is very susceptible to bacterial activity, so be sure to remove the garlic cloves before sealing the jars. (I hardly ever do that and all is always well. But I suppose you don't want to keep these around for years before you eat them.)

Wash thoroughly and cut in half, lengthwise:

4 lbs. of cucumbers

Combine and heat to the boiling point:

3 cups white vinegar
3 cups water
1/3 cup pickling salt (really- no more- seriously)
If you want Kosher dills (and who doesn't?) add:
12 peeled garlic cloves

When the boiling point is reached, remove the garlic cloves (whatever). Pack the cucumbers in hot, sterilized jars. (See http://blessourhearts.blogspot.com/2009/07/lets-make-pickles.html for instructions on how to sterilize jars if you don't know how to do that.)
Add to each jar:
2 Tablespoons dill seeds
3 Peppercorns

Fill the jars to within 1/2 inch of the top with the hot pickling liquid. Immediately adjust lids. Seal and process in boiling water bath for ten minutes. (And begin timing when water boils.)
******************

And that, my friends, is that. Eat or turn into Kool Aid pickles if that is what your heart desires.

Hot And Getting Hotter, Weird And Getting Weirder, Old And Getting Older

Arrrgh and Accck and Damn-It-All-To-Hell and well, it's eight-thirty in the morning and that's how I feel already.
Not in DESPAIR, exactly (my usual morning default emotion) but all tangled and knotted as if someone was learning to weave by creating me on a crooked loom.
Oh, it's bucolic and lovely here in Lloyd this morning and the roosters next door are crowing and I can hear my chickens peeping and whistling and oh wait. Hold on. I'm about to have a hot flash.
How do I know?
Suddenly I feel as if the world is coming to an end and whoever is weaving me on that loom has grabbed the threads in her unkind hand and is yanking them up to the breaking point.
Yep. Here it comes, the face is flushing, the left hand has gone numb, the sweat is starting to break out on my entire body.
Okay. This is the first hot flash of my waking day and there will be many, many more.
I am sick of this.
I was pretty darn sick of it about ten years ago, too.

Last night was not a good night. I was tired. I went to bed. The house was not cooling down. I laid there with the covers off of me, seemingly in one unending hot flash. I fell asleep, and then something would wake me up. This happened over and over again. I got up.
I read for awhile, went to sleep in the Panther Room. I didn't eat Chex Mix. A few mixed nuts were ingested though, to be honest.
Anyway, there I was, finally sleeping when Mr. Moon appeared in the doorway a little after three a.m. Was he looking for me? No. He didn't even know I wasn't in our bed but when Dolly the Dog who was sleeping with me started barking, he figured it out. He is tall, that Mr. Moon, and even in the darkness, in my blind-state, I could see him standing there.
"There's something wrong with the AC," he said, in the same tone as one might expect if he were saying, "There's a murderer in the house!"
I already knew there was something wrong with the AC.
He went to the hallway to check the setting, the filter.
Me, I was thinking, I'm so tired. Please. Let me just go back to sleep. I had a fan on me. I was okay. I had been sleeping.
But no, he rattled around and took out the filter and took it outside, screen doors slamming, wooden doors slamming, etc. I laid in the darkness, feeling guilty because I hadn't cleaned the filter and because I was feeling so hateful. I wanted to sleep. I had only been asleep for about an hour and a half and it was after three.
He finally finished doing what I should have done a while ago. "The motor may be burned out," he said. Okay. He didn't say that. He said something more technical. I don't know what. But it was like that. A motor that makes the fan blow in the AC is probably burned out. More money, more money, MO' MONEY!
He went back to bed. I thought to go get back in our bed with him but I was paralyzed by wanting to sleep and feeling that if I just laid there and breathed, there might be a chance but if I got up and moved and went back to our bed, I would lay there all night, one hot flash after another.
I finally got back to sleep. I got up this morning. He was already up, dressed, and pissed off that we hadn't cleaned the filter in a while, which may or may not be the problem. Bless him, he is not blaming me directly.
"We should have thought about it," he said.

That was the night.
This is the day.

The chickens- we put the babies back in their little pen because Elmira is so small that she fits right through the wires of the big pen, even with those crazy feathers. She is a Houdini, that little one, and escaped from where I had them yesterday in the run. I found her trotting back and forth outside it, trying to get back in with her sibs and I feel so lucky that a cat or a snake or a hawk didn't get her while she was out.

And we leave for Mexico in one week. ONE WEEK and no, again, I am not ready. Not physically or spiritually or emotionally or any other way. I did not lose ten pounds. I have not gotten a strap for my bathing suit. I have not gotten my books together. I have not gotten in touch with my inner sex goddess. My fingernails and toenails look like those of a beast, and my hair? Dear God, I want to cut it all off. Shave it. Tattoo my head. Whatever.

But you know what? I am SO ready for a vacation. No chopping of vegetables or weeds. No baking, no simmering, no marinating, no mixing, no fixing, no washing, no drying, no sweeping, no cleaning up of dog poop and pee and vomit, no chicken-tending.

Wait. No chicken-tending?
Really?

Well, I guess that missing my chickens and knowing that I have a grandbaby coming will get me home again. Not to mention my other babies. Yeah, I'll come home.

And I hope that when I do, whoever is weaving this cloth of me (and would that weaver be...ME?) has figured out the pattern and has worked out the knots and tangles.

And that the AC is working. So I can sleep.

Back To Our Regularly Scheduled Program

Well, some days I rale and rant against injustice and bullshit and things I really can't do a damn thing about but it always comes back to the things I can control- my chickens being one of those things. Or at least I delude myself into thinking I have some semblance of control over them.

Today was the day I decided the younger chicks needed to be moved from their little pen into the chicken house to prepare them to be mixed with the older ladies. A friend of ours told us that if we let them loose in the chicken house before we let them loose in the coop, they'll know where they're supposed to go at night, so that's what I'm doing.
Here they were in their custom-made baby pen:


They're getting so big. I have one guy whom I feel sure is a rooster. We are calling him Henry. I've been trying to get a good picture of him but he moves around a lot. It wasn't easy, catching all those strong little birds and transferring them, one by one, to the hen house, but I did it. And they were a little freaked out for about two seconds and then they busied themselves trying to pull up the bamboo that's growing in there and scratching around in the straw. I think that's one of the things I really like about chickens- they may get traumatized but they snap right out of it and then forget that life was ever anything but good and exciting and filled with whatever treat may come their way for that moment.



That's Henry there on the left, the brownish reddish chicken with the bigger comb than all the rest and the big, thick, Ticonderoga #2 yellow pencil legs. Elvira is in the bottom of the picture and please- why are her wing feathers sticking out like that? She is starting to grow some but is still half the size of all the others and those wing feathers! I have never seen this before.
Have you?

After I moved them, I gave all the chickens some watermelon as a treat and they were very delighted at that. The big hens were a bit disconcerted that I'd closed the outside door to their hen house and pecked at it for awhile, peck, peck, peck, as if they were knocking to gain entrance. As soon as I put the watermelon down though, they abandoned their efforts at door knocking and decided to eat.



I am a fool for those birds. Do you hear me? A fool.

And here's one more of Elmira, my brave little chicken that Mr. Moon saved with sugar and Centrum Silver.


She may be little but she eats as much as the rest of them and always gets to the new treats first. I have great hopes for my little crazy-feathered girl.

And so it goes. All the babies are growing up and being tended and treated well and I hope I'm making the right decision about mixing them up with their big aunties. They don't even all have names yet. So far we've named Elmira, Buttercup, Henry and Sookie. That leaves four more who are nameless, but they shall not remain so. Kian named Sookie, and Riley was suggesting names for the others like Shalayla and other complicated things I would never remember but Sookie was a good hen-name and so it stuck.

And who knows? Perhaps I shall name one Shalayla. It better be a fancy chicken for such a fancy name.

The Crime Of No-Choice

What I'm thinking about this morning is an article in the paper. Someone left a baby in the bathroom of the hospital. "Red hair," said the paper. The baby has red hair and was wrapped in a blanket. And it's a crime because the mother (or whoever dropped the baby off) didn't report it, didn't go to the fire station or wherever it is you're supposed to go and hand the baby over. Say, "Here. I had a baby. I can't take care of it. You take it from here."

No, this person just left it in the bathroom and fled. The baby wasn't born in the hospital but was only a few hours old.
Can you imagine? Can you?
I can't.
And I am not speaking of can you imagine someone so heartless as to leave a newborn baby, no I'm speaking of what horrible circumstance must a woman have been in to have been able to do that?

Was she a young girl? Was she afraid of her parents, was she afraid for her future?
Where were her parents? What mother doesn't see her daughter growing pregnant before her eyes?
The problem I had with that movie Juno was that the girl's parents were so loving, so supportive, but they didn't offer to help her raise that baby. Of if they did, I don't remember it. If my daughter had a baby and couldn't raise it, I think (I believe) I would raise it myself and say to my daughter- this baby is here always and you are always her mother but I will do what you need me to do and I will love this child and I will help you to love her too.

But I don't think my mother would have done that. I think that if I had gotten pregnant and couldn't have figured a way out of it (and abortion was only legal in New York at the time I was young) I might have been in that much despair.

I don't know.
None of us knows and it's never fair for us to judge someone in a situation like this. A situation so grim that a woman (girl?) would abandon her newborn, redheaded baby, wrapped in a blanket in a hospital bathroom.
I suppose that in a situation that grim, it's best for the baby to be raised by someone else.
And thank God the baby will have that chance, and was not left in a dumpster somewhere to die alone surrounded by coffee grounds and old newspapers and who knows what else? The mother did that much for her child, at least. She gave the child a chance.

And they're hammering on in the Senate about Sotomayor saying once that a wise Latina woman might have more knowledge with which to judge than a white man and they're pissed that she said that but you know and I know it's true.

And what they're really saying is, "You think abortion is okay. You won't protect the unborn."
Because those white men have no idea what it feels like to know you've started a life inside of you that you are not capable of caring for. They don't. But somehow, they want to judge a woman who does know and who does know that a child, once born, needs so much more than mere breath. Health care and food and someone to watch over her and how can you watch over her when you're working a job for minimum wage which won't support the child anyway, but you have to try, and that's not fair. And it will end badly, although it never ends until that child grows up and gets pregnant and then it all begins again.

Someone left their baby in the hospital bathroom and they're talking about how it's a crime.
Oh yeah, there's a crime that's been committed here but I have a feeling it began a long, long time ago.
But that mother gave her baby a chance. She might not have followed protocol. She might not have abandoned her baby by the rules, but she gave the baby life and then she gave the baby a chance at life and we need to remember that and we need to remember that something very wrong happened in HER life for this to have been the best option for her, in her mind, still clouded by giving birth.

I am so sad about this, thinking of a woman (girl) somewhere, her milk coming in, her body still bleeding her arms so empty. Hell, I don't know. Maybe she's already back out on the street, scoring some crack.
But even if she is, there is something so wrong here that the most natural order of things was disrupted and a baby was left in a bathroom.

The crime here is that we don't take care of the born. We don't always provide for them what they need, much less what they want. Talk about the unborn and preborn all you want, but it's the born we need to think about, need to support and cherish and nurture and raise and love.

Someone did not do that for the woman (girl?) who had that baby, who took her to a place where she knew she would be found and taken care of. She left her wrapped up infant, hours old, in a hospital bathroom and walked away, in pain, I'm sure. She'd just given birth.
Unless someone else did it. A boyfriend, a mother, who?

A redheaded baby. I had one of those myself once. It was the first best day of my life. I cry everytime I think about that day. For joy.
And that is as it should be.

I don't have an ending. There is no ending. Women all over the world are abandoning babies as we speak due to circumstances beyond their control.
That's the crime. That we can't take care of all we have. That situations are so dire that a woman can abandon a baby. That sometimes the best thing a mother thinks she can do for her child is to leave it, wrapped in a blanket in a hospital bathroom.

The baby has red hair.

July Fourteenth, Two Thousand And Nine

It's summer here and so hot, so very hot and the air
Is like five hot bags of wet cement, always pressing down on your head, your chest,
Making your legs and arms so heavy.
And wet, oh, it's wet and because of that, the trees are so very green.
Green is everywhere but it's getting a little tired
Not the sweet, fresh here-I-am! green of spring but the
Wearier, more practiced, fully operational green of hot summer days
And the cicadas sing and the crickets pulse at night
Like maybe they are the heartbeat of the world
Or at least of this part of it, rising/falling, swelling/diminishing
A heart-beat, lovers' movements, tides of water rising and falling
It's all the same.
It is all the rhythm we live by whether we know it or not
Whether we listen or not
Whether we pay attention or not.
The rise and fall of breath and our concentration on it can lead us to a sort of
Non-state of spiritual being
So concentrate on the crickets if you get the chance. I think that's what I'm saying.

I walk and there are dog fennel and cat tails and wild
Morning glory, passion flower, Devil's needle, Swamp Mallow, Blackberry,
And when I stop to squat and pee in the woods, I see I am right beside a Beauty Berry
The berries just forming, tight, hard, and green, soon to be the sort of mauve
I hope to wear in heaven.
Beauty Berry, indeed.
You cannot eat them but you can bring them home and put them in a vase
Of a color of your choosing. I suggest that sort of light seafoam green myself.

This morning I walked down to the creek
The No Trespassing Sign has disappeared which was sign enough for me to go
Down that path and into the woods where I always think
They'd never find me if I disappeared here by snake or crazy person or wild cat or bear
Or allergic reaction.
Never. And then I think,
Oh well.

The creek is running slowly and is small in its sandy banks right now
And as brown and clear as iced tea
And indeed it is a tea, leaves brewed in its water as it flows.
Oaks and pines and cedars hang over it, grow beside it
And I thought to myself that if I lived by a real river of majesty and wonder
I couldn't bear the beauty
This small creek almost does me in
As it runs all by itself, no one to see it but me.

I walked home and almost stopped at the little church
Mt. Zion MB Baptist Church of Lloyd
A little golden/beige cinder block affair
Where I have seen musicians walk in with basses and guitars
On Sunday mornings
And ladies wear hats the color of Beauty Berries sometimes.
I've never attended services and I don't know why.
They would welcome me, despite my pale skin, my lack of a
Beauty Berry hat.
I know they would.
And unbeknownst to them, I sometimes stop behind the church
And use the hose to cool my face before I do the last leg of my walk
That final walk down Main Street here in Lloyd.
They give me holy water of life without knowing it, and I need to slip
A little money into an envelope and push it under the door someday
With a note saying, "Thank-you for the cool living water you have provided me."
They would wonder about that but isn't wonder what we seek in church anyway?

Well, some of us do.
I seek it in the woods and along the paths and roads
The shade of the pine trees, the majesty of the oak trees
The butterflies sipping from the flower of their own season
The turtle on the side of the road who, when he sees me coming
Slips so quickly into his den that he belies the myth that turtles move slowly.

It's all wonder to me, every day.
Even the days I am in despair
Wonder because I can move my body
Through this hot, wet air
And the wild grapes are forming, making sugar of sun
Making skin and seeds, draped over fences and branches
And there is so much life I cannot begin to list it all
But I say to myself
Dog fennel, cat tails, pine tree, live oak, swamp mallow
Passion flower, Devil's needle, morning glory
Beauty berry
Beauty berry
Beauty berry
As I walk, as I breathe, as the crickets and cicadas
Keep the heart beat of the rhythm of the summer of this year
As I walk, as I chant, as I pray with my breath
My eyes
My ears
As I give praise with my words, my wonder, my giving it all up
And I surrender to the heat and the air and the rhythm
Of it all as I walk to the rhythm of it all.

From One Of The Blog World's Bulliest Pulpits

Before I get my real blog on today I wanted to put this out here. I want you, if you haven't already, and if you have any interest in birth at all, to go visit our Blogosphere godmother, Heather Armstrong and read her Part I of the story of her recent birth.

She had her first child in the American way- drugs, cuts, stitches, and so forth and was a huge proponent of letting the medical people do what they do best during childbirth. And then she read a book called Your Best Birth and it changed her life.

You know, I'm just an old hippie who writes a tiny blog and who believes so very strongly in the power of women to birth their children and the rights of all women to have choices in labor and to have the knowledge to know what those choices are and why we need to make them. And I've talked about that a lot here in my blog. I had three of my four at home and I would not be who I am and I would not have the relationship with my children if I had not had them the way I was so blessed to be able to.

But Heather- well, she speaks and the world gets her message. I am so grateful that she has discovered the spiritual and sacred (her words) aspect of childbirth and that she is now writing about it.

Ina May Gaskin, Ricki Lake, Heather Armstrong.
All the mamas. A long chain, sometimes broken, then mended and continued.

Go read it.

Let's Make Pickles!

I started canning food just about the same time I started attending home births and I came to find there are common threads.

Both are serious business and not to be taken lightly. This seems more obvious when it comes to birth than to canning but there are boiling hot liquids involved in canning and also, if you don't do it right, just as in childbirth, someone can die.

Things have to be done correctly, things have to be sterilized. And if you ever need to know how to sterilize things at home in preparation for a home birth, I can tell you how.

But that's not today's subject. Today's subject is the fourteen day pickle and how you make it.

First disclaimer: The making of pickles, especially the canning part of the process, must be undertaken seriously and soberly. This is not the time to be drinking beer or smokin' a big fattie. (Can you believe I said that? I'm cracking myself up tonight.) But really, it's not. Not only do you not want to spill boiling liquid on yourself or anyone else, you do not want to give anyone Botulism. Honestly, I have never personally met anyone who got sick from eating home-canned food but why risk it? As with birthing babies, safety and health first.
Always. No exceptions.



Recipe:

Ingredients:

2 gallons cucumbers sliced into chunks
2 cups salt, non-iodized (like pickling salt)
2 Tablespoons Alum (powdered)
5 pints Apple Cider Vinegar, boiling hot
9 cups sugar (not kidding, yeah, nine)
1/2 oz. celery seed
2 cinnamon sticks
5 Tablespoons pickling spice

Directions:

In a clean stone (glass or ceramic) jar (And I use a crock that my grandmother left me or else one I bought in an antique store and when I say clean, I mean CLEAN. Use bleach if necessary to get that sucker clean) put 2 gallons of cucumbers, washed and sliced into chunks. They must be sliced or else they will shrivel and please- who wants shriveled pickles? Shrinkage is going to occur but let's try and keep it to a minimum.
Dissolve the salt in one gallon of boiling water. Pour this over the cucumbers in their crock. Cover the pickles and weight the cover down. I use a plate over the cukes with a pyrex bowl on top with a big can of tomatoes in it. Cover that, after it has cooled a bit, with saran wrap or something to keep the flies out.
Let stand for one week. Mark it on the calendar because you're going to forget.

On the eighth day, drain the pickles. (Please note- whenever I say "drain" I mean, take your very clean hands and pick up the pickles, letting the juice run back into the crock between your fingers. That crock is heavy and this seems the easiest way to me. I put the drained pickles into a huge bowl while I am finishing the rest of the process.) If you see some mold, do not worry and do not throw the whole thing out. I believe this is part of the process. Come on- grow up. A little mold never hurt anyone. Think sauerkraut and blue cheese.
Pour one gallon of boiling water over the drained pickles which you have put back into the crock. Let stand for twenty-four hours.

On the ninth day (and it only took God six days to create the universe, but he's God and We're not), drain the pickles again. Dissolve the alum (and I do not know what alum is and I do not want to because it can't be good. This is what perks up the pickles and makes them crispy- think pickle Viagra) in one gallon of boiling water and pour that over the pickles. Let stand for another twenty-four hours.

On the tenth day, prepare the magic pickling elixir. Combine the boiling vinegar with six cups of the sugar. Only six! You have to add the sugar gradually or something terrible will happen. I don't know what. But you don't want to fuck it up at this point, right? When dissolved, add the celery seed and cinnamon sticks and pickling spice. Some people bag all that stuff up so it doesn't go into the final product but I like to see all my spices floating around. If you don't, tie them up in cheesecloth.



Drain the pickles and pour the boiling elixir over them.

On the twelfth and thirteenth days, drain the pickles, saving the liquid. Heat the liquid up again, dissolving one cup of sugar in it both days. Pour back over the pickles.

On the fourteenth day, drain the pickles, saving the liquid. Pack the pickles into sterilized jars. Heat the liquid and dissolve one more cup of sugar (yes, these are not really pickles, they are cucumber candy- let's face it) in it. Pour the sweetened liquid over the pickles and seal jars.

Now. I actually process my pickles, due to my paranoia about Botulism. And let's talk about sterilization here.
To can food, you really need a canning kettle. Here is mine with some freshly sterilized jars in the rack which comes with the kettle:


And the canning kettle is only good for high-acid foods like tomatoes and pickles. If you are going to can something like green beans, you need a pressure canner.

You are also going to need a jar-lifter too. It looks like this:



And in action, it looks like this:


Note: Although the jar lifter looks like something you might use at a birth, IT IS NOT! It is only used for jar lifting.

So to sterilize your jars, you need to wash them in clean soapy water and rinse them well. Then put them in the canning kettle in their neat little wire slots and fill the kettle with water to a level about two inches over the jars. If you put the jars in with water already in them, you will eliminate that floating-jars problem.
Put the canning kettle on the biggest burner you have, put the cover on it, and turn that sucker up to high. When the water comes to a boil, time it for ten minutes and then turn the burner off, carefully lift up the wire rack, drain the jars (using the jar lifter!) and put the jars on a piece of newspaper. While you are doing this, wash the jar lids and rings and put them in a pan with water to cover. Bring to a boil, turn the burner off and leave them in the pan until ready to use.



Pack your pickles (that sounds rather racy, doesn't it?) into the clean, hot jars. Pour your hot liquid (in this case, the elixir) to cover the pickles. Wipe off the tops of the jars with a clean cloth. Put the sterilized lids on the jars and screw your bands on.
Put the jars back into the canning kettle, bring back to a boil, and let boil for ten more minutes.

There. You are done. You will bring those jars out of the kettle and back onto the newspaper and you will hear the lids pop, which is the sound of success. If a lid does not pop- no worries. Put that jar into the refrigerator and that will be the first jar you eat.


This recipe made me eleven pints of beautiful pickles. There they are. I can't tell you how happy I am to have them.

One more bit of advice: for all things canned, consult your Ball Blue Book.


This was your great grandmother's canning bible and it will not fail you.

And one more disclaimer: Do not eat one of these pickles if you are diabetic. Seriously. Nine cups of sugar in one gallon of vinegar? Need I say more?

And I know this sounds like a lot of work but if you get your canning kettle and your jar lifter and your jars, you will be all set for the rest of your life.
Also, the canning kettle can double as a little play pool if filled with water for your toddler.

Enjoy. I know I will.

Tell Me, Please.

I am having a blog problem, y'all.
It's a problem of time.
Like right now, this very second, I am just back from town where I did several things including buying a duplex (long story) and finding a bathing suit. I did it! I found my second bathing suit! And I was so used to hitting my head with that brick that it hardly hurt at all.
Found this one at TJ Maxx and it is black and it is fine except that it's missing the optional strap thingee and since it won't be optional for me, I have to go out and find one but May says if I go to Victoria's Secret and tell them that I lost the strap to my strapless bra, they'll give me one.

Anyway, la-di-dah and so forth. It is now four o'clock in the afternoon, I have been running around since seven thirty this morning, Mr. Moon has left to go out of town, I need to muck out the chicken coops, plant some okra (no, I still haven't done that), finish tidying up a few more cabinets in the kitchen, do something about that mess on top of the refrigerator, and today is the day I jar up the fourteen day sweet pickles. I have the jars in the water bath right now for the sterilization process. I have been taking pictures as I've gone along with this whole pickle-making exercise and will be posting a how-to thing on it later. Maybe even tonight! Who knows?

But here's the deal- there are eighteen unread blog posts in my google reader, I have not responded to one of the comments I've been left today and you KNOW I always respond to every one of them and if I forget one, please forgive me, it was out of error, not intent.
I am behind! Very much behind!

But if I don't do the things I need to do around here because I'm always blogging and reading blogs, I'll be out of a job because what would I have to blog about if I didn't have a life? Well, that's assuming I do have a life, which I sort of do, but if I don't get out there and take care of things I won't. You know what I mean.

So that's my dilemma- how do you take care of your blog-life while maintaining your "real life" or RL as they say in the blog biz? Like- Aunt Becky, how do you do this? AND YOU HAVE THREE KIDS, ONE OF WHOM IS AN INFANT! You must read about five thousand blogs a day and you always leave such sweet comments. And you blog every day! Despite the name of your blog, I sincerely doubt you are drinking much of anything except for Red Bulls in order to get all of this done. Do you eat? Do you sleep?

So okay. I have to go now. I forgot to mention the trash needs taking to the trash place which means I have to put on a bra. Yes, I wear a bra to go to the DUMP because the last time I went and decided that no, that old man who hangs out as the dump caretaker doesn't care whether or not I wear a bra, I ran into a guy I know and he hugged me! and I wasn't wearing a bra and OMG!!!! (It was Brad, Kids. Remember Brad? "We cut your grass, we trim your bush?" He is now the daddy of a one-year old girl whom he is raising on his own with the help of his grandma, the preacher, and his twin brother! Brad has a twin brother!)
Well. Life in Lloyd.

But seriously- any answers on how to maintain a blog and a polite and mannerly response and comment life while still doing things like mucking chicken pens and planting okra?
Helpful hints appreciated.

Love you truly....Ms. Moon

P.S. Please don't stop leaving comments in order to free up my time. I live and die by the comments. Really.

And If Only Bon-Bons Were Involved, It Would Be Perfect

Kathleen was telling me the other day about a woman she'd known who, around the age of retirement, told her husband that she was retiring, which meant that there would no longer be any cooking going on and no housecleaning either, so he might as well face the fact that all meals would be taken in restaurants from here on out and there would be a maid.

I've been thinking about that. Thinking about how the work I do is never going to be something I retire from. If I told my husband what that woman told hers, Mr. Moon would look at me as if I'd lost my mind and then go on to discuss something else entirely like tires or hunting land or HD video cameras. He just wouldn't take me seriously. He does sometimes ask if I'll still cook for him when we get old, but not as much as he used to when the kids still lived here, fearing then that when they left, I wouldn't bother any more. I think he's pretty much accepted the fact that I will indeed cook and of course I will because hey! I get hungry. And going to a restaurant involves putting on a bra which we all know is not something I care to do unless the experience is going to prove worth it and most meals out do not.
Plus, I like to cook.

Now housekeeping is another matter. Parts of it I like. I don't mind doing laundry and or the dishes so much, or bedmaking. It's the actual cleaning that I hate. I have no idea why, but I do. Perhaps it's because it's so constant and endless and the result, although lovely, is so very transient. I clean and mop and within minutes the dogs have brought in some piece of wood and chewed it to slivers on the rug and there you go. Things just PILE UP, old catalogs and magazines and coupons for 20% off Bed, Bath, and Beyond. How many rain forests have been destroyed for those coupons? And the cabinets, no matter how fine my intentions, become avalanches waiting to happen when the doors are opened- cooking sheets and pyrex baking ware and muffin tins and bread pans all pouring out to bruise my feet or that cabinet where I keep the leftover containers, the plastic yogurt containers, the tupperware, the rubbermaid stuff- all of it seems to lose its lids, to take up too much space for what it's all worth.
Chaos theory in action.

Ah yah. I've strayed from my subject.

This is not a manifesto, believe me, about housekeeping or the work I do. I feel lucky beyond lucky to be able to have a life where I can grow a garden and make pickles and hang my clothes on the line and make what is now trendily called "slow food" but which I just call "food." And I doubt I'll ever want to give all of that up because that IS my life- not just my work.

But I think about the fact that there will never be a day when I don't do this sort of work unless I become like my grandmother when she got dementia and immediately forgot how to do any sort of cleaning or cooking or bedmaking or laundry. I mean Granny FORGOT and was UNABLE and so my grandfather, bless his old heart, had to learn to do those things which she had always done for him. And he did. Sort of.

What I'm trying to say here is that what I do is not really work. If it were, there would be a salary and a retirement from it, eventually. Not work in the definition of work that we use today. Work is going to an office or a kitchen in a restaurant or a hospital or a studio or a field. Work is not doing what needs to be done to keep a family healthy, happy, fed, and living in a state of semi-grace and order. Everyone does these things, mostly women, probably, but we all have to deal with the garbage and the filling of the refrigerator and the scrubbing of the toilets and the keeping some semblance of order in the household.

There used to be books on the Domestic Arts and there are still classes and schools for the Culinary Arts, but those are for people looking to be employed as chefs or cooks. There used to be Home Economic classes where girls (always girls) were taught to cook basic things and to sew a little bit and to set a table and to do the things that needed to be done to run a home. This is no longer true, as if everyone were just born knowing how to make a white sauce, how to sew on a button, that the forks go on the left, the knives and spoons on the right.

Meanwhile, magazines like Martha Stewart's thrive. Why? Because we all long for homes where things are not just "kept" but where there is a grace to it, an art, if you will. If our homes are fairly serene and well-run, parts of our souls can be serene and free to deal with life on a much clearer basis. Or so it seems to me, anyway.

But these ideas, like the idea of honoring the mother and what she does are more ideals than reality, I think.
We give lip service to mothers and their sacrifices and how important they are and then we send them off to work because they have to because mothers do not get paid for doing the most important work in the world- raising sane and happy and healthy children- and children can't live off love alone. We give lip service and pay good money for magazines promoting the idea that our homes can be beautiful and the keeping of them can be creative and satisfying while ignoring the fact that this takes actual work and money and that it's a lot easier to read and dream about such than it is to do it and no one has time anyway.

Well. It's Sunday. I have clothes to hang on the line and pickles to put away. I made seven pints of dills yesterday and the kitchen looks like a pickle factory with the canning kettle and the little jars of dill seed and the crock of sweet pickles working their way to perfection and the jars and lids and jar-lifter. The refrigerator is filled with cucumbers waiting their turn and half-gallons of vinegar stand in wait on the counter. Chaos. Barely controlled chaos.
But it is such a beautiful thing and so very satisfying to gather all the equipment and ingredients and sterilize jars and pack them with vegetables and make the brine and add the spices and twist all the lids and put them in the boiling water bath and time them and then lift them out to sit on a piece of newspaper and listen for the POP as the lids suck down and the process is completed.
That makes my heart happy.
As it does to see the sheets on the line and to know how they'll feel when we lay down on them tonight.
As it does to water the porch plants (Riley said yesterday, "You have plants EVERYWHERE!") and to check the progress of rooting begonias and sprouting new leaves on the mango.

No. I will never retire. Thank god I have Mr. Moon to provide for me.
I hope he thanks his lucky stars he has me to provide for him what I do. I think he does.
And in that way, I do certainly get paid to do what I do.
Which makes me feel guilty somehow, as if I am getting away with something that very few get away with these days, which is the practice of the Domestic Arts which makes my soul happy, my days busy and filled, and somehow myself satisfied.

Yes, I have to scrub toilets. No, I don't get social security. Yes, I get to can food that I grow. No, I don't earn my living. No, I am not Martha Stewart.
But I am me and I am happy, usually, doing these things that I do and yes, sometimes I need a vacation from it and YES! I am so lucky to be able to do so.

And there you have it. I am an anachronism in a modern world. I live in a house that is one hundred and fifty year old and I do things here that women would have done when it was built. My circumstances are different and my work is made much easier by my modern conveniences but I think I take the same pride in the result which is nothing more than doing the work that needs to be done, while having the luxury of being able to do it.

Perhaps I am just living in a dream world. Well, so be it.
It's a good dream and I take comfort in the fact that even as I feel guilty, I work hard and I do my best.

There is very little more one can ask of life than that.

The Rest Of The Story

So Kian and Riley have gone home with their dad although Riley pretty much decided that she wanted to live here. They love my house and who wouldn't? There are chickens to feed and a kid next door to play with who has a ton of toys and who loves to share them and a giant bathtub to float around in with the duckies and lots of Little Bear books their Aunt Mary will read to them before bed and Uncle Glen who can turn them upside down to walk on the ceiling and there are always pancakes (plain for Riley, with blueberries, peaches and pecans for Kian) and all the dogs to play with who will handily eat up anything you drop on the floor and frogs and bugs and a garden to pick actual vegetables out of and stairs to climb and hats to try on and well, frankly it's better than Disney World and I need a nap.
I mean really. I need a nap. And I didn't even get up when they did. Uncle Glen did. And they were awake when I went to sleep. Oh sure, they were in bed but after we'd read the stories and everyone had gotten water and then peed and then been tucked in for the third time with dire warnings about getting out of bed ONE MORE TIME, I went to sleep. They're the best kids in the world and I sincerely doubted they were going to get up and set the house on fire.
Plus, it was almost midnight. Right?
When I got up this morning they were like, "Aunt Mary! Aunt Mary! Will you cook us pancakes and sausage?!!!" and I was still about ten feet away from the coffee pot. I said, "Yes. I will. But it's going to take a little while."
And it did.
They can't believe how long it takes Aunt Mary to cook things but that's because their family has two working parents and most of their meals involved freezers and microwaves, I believe. My meals involve stringing beans and making macaroni and cheese from scratch and the same with the pancakes. But I believe they think it's worth it.
I know their pictures make them look like they're way too sweet and good for words but honest to god, they just are. I never have to say, "Now y'all hug each other for the picture." They just do it. And everything is so new and swell to them.




"Look! Rocks!" and "Wow! This is tall grass!" and "The chickens are eating the collard greens!" and "This cucumber is HUGE!" and so forth. You can't help but get excited with them.




"I want to live in a house just like this when I grow up," says Riley and I smile from my toes to the top of my head.
"Me too," I say. "Me too."
So I sort of feel like I got some grandmama practice in today and it felt good.
"I can't wait until the chickens lay eggs," Kian said as they were leaving.
"I'll call you when they do," I told him, and I kissed his buzzy little head, so filled with facts and thoughts and Big Ideas. He can read now and I'm just amazed. And Riley can cut her pancakes up all by herself. And eat her weight in macaroni and cheese.
They're growing up. They're five and seven now and before I know it, they'll be graduating from high school. I need to have them over more while they're still so enthralled with chickens and frogs and finding a penny at the post office. These days won't last forever and while they're still so enchanted with life in Lloyd, I need to get them out here to enjoy it. Because how can I not enjoy two young'uns so happy to be in the place that makes me happiest?
Besides, I get to read them books which is one of my biggest pleasures in life- reading books to kids. And they pay attention and don't jump around while I'm doing it.
And then they go home with Daddy.
And then I take a nap because all this love and wonder wears my ass out.
I feel like I've been working on the railroad, all the livelong day.
With the two sweetest children in the world who really like macaroni and cheese, even the kind that Aunt Mary makes that doesn't come out of the blue box. And takes a really long time to make.

What We Are Doing Today

My niece and nephew, Riley and Kian, are visiting today. They spent the night and we've had a very lovely morning, eating pancakes, walking to the post office where there was a frog, and visiting with Harley next door.
Now we're off to pick the garden and visit with the chickens.
The fun never ends at Aunt Mary and Uncle Glen's.

Under The Heading Of What The Fucking Fuck?

Someone remind Bill O'Reilley that he's an asshat.

Home. By Jessie.

When Jessie was out yesterday, she had her new camera with her and snapped many pictures.
She took pictures of the post office box and the porches and spiders and dirt dauber structures and our house and the dogs and me and her daddy.
She's on her way to Miami now to catch the plane for Jamaica and I'm thinking about her. I'm also thinking about how really, I need to pour a little water over the flames of my ego and realize that trying to protect and shelter my children even when they are adults is mostly evidence of a vast over-fed sense of my abilities. And it also implies that I don't trust their abilities which I very much do so what's the deal here?
I'm here if they need me. They know it and that's that.
Or that's what I'm trying to learn now and it's about damn time.
On to the pictures. Click on them to see them in their full-sized glory.



Here's me and Mr. Moon. He's eating the last of the blackberry cobbler I made last weekend. With ice cream on it. Mr. Moon loves ice cream. I love Mr. Moon.


This is where I get my mail every day. The boxes are just like the ones in the Roseland post office when I was a child. I think our number there was 174 but I'm not sure. Our post mistress in Roseland was a woman named Nelly. Our post mistresses here is a woman named Joanne. I have grown up to come home.


Our house. It's a very, very, very fine house. And there indeed two cats in the yard. Check out the live oak on the left. It's huge. I read a thing the other day that said live oaks live 600 years. Two hundred to grow, two hundred to live, two hundred to die. I have no idea if this is true or not, but I think that tree is at least two hundred years old.



And here's me, standing in the little yard of my office, surveying my pinecone lillies, my phlox, my ferns. Buster is surveying with me.

And finally, because they are so pretty and photogenic, two pictures of the chickens.


Yes. Suzie is really that big and Miss Betty is really that small.


And the little ones. See Elmira way in the back with her little head poking up? She must be related to Miss Betty. But she's a plucky, healthy chick. Aren't the teenager chickens funny looking with their feathers all coming in and sticking out everywhere as if they hadn't figured out quite where to go yet? I think they are.

And looking at these pictures, I realize that I have plenty to worry about and take care of right here where I live. And that the children, my grown-up, very capable, very smart and amazing children, know where they can find me if they need me.

Right here, maybe in my garden. They can just fly right over here on their own strong wings.


Amen.
Happy Friday.

Love...Ms. Moon

Fly, Babies. Spread Your Wings And Fly.

I am so agitato today. Agitato is a word that Kinky Friedman uses in his books. Mr. Moon and I use it a lot, especially to describe when we've had too much coffee.

I am agitato today, not because of too much coffee, but because Jessie is going off to Jamaica where I can't protect her. I am agitato because Lily is pregnant and I can't protect her on that journey. I am agitato because May is in pain and because there is so much she has to bear and I can't make it all better. I am agitato because Hank, although very much a grown-up man will face things in his life that I can't imagine and I can't help him with.

I am agitato because I am me, and I can't help but want to control everything, while at the same time, knowing I can't even control what goes on inside me.

And all of this agitation makes me think that if I don't finish cleaning my house and make a good, healthy supper for my husband that the world will fall apart. That I will have failed, failed, failed. I know I am displacing my agitation. I know I am taking things I can't control and trying to force control on something I can. My house. My dinner.

I bought two candles at the Winn Dixie the other day. One a Virgin of Guadalupe candle and one a plain red one. I wish I had bought a white one to burn for clarity, for soothing. I don't pray, I don't believe, but I light candles to make wishes visible.

I drain the pickles. I boil water and pour it over them in the crock. Tomorrow I will make the pickling solution- the vinegar, so much sugar, spices. The real magic will begin. I mop the floors, I dust the furniture, I oil my grandfather's rocking chair. I pot two plants to put on a porch.

I touch totems- my grandfather's rocking chair, the crock I make my pickles in, my skillets, my pictures, my computer, the dirt.

When Hank and May were little and they had to go (GOT to go!) to their father's every Monday and Tuesday nights, I had to learn to separate from them by pretending I did not have children two days a week. It was the only way. Otherwise I would have lost my mind.
Guess what? It didn't work. I did lose my mind.
I still do that- when they leave to go off, whether for a week or a month or time I don't know the number of minutes, hours, days, months, years in, I lose my shit for a time. I think, "I can't bear this," and then I do.

But something inside of me goes a little crazy.
I clean. I make supper. I cry. I berate myself for such foolishness.

Why did I give them wings if I didn't want them to fly?

I want them to fly. All of my children. I want them to fly as high and as far as they can go. I know I can't protect them forever. I know that. I even know they can protect themselves because they are so strong, so amazing, so smart. I know that.

But that part of me that reached for them at the moment of their birth doesn't know it. That part of me that drew them to my breast doesn't know it. That part of me that watched them as they slept to make sure they were breathing doesn't know it.

Is this normal?

It is for me. Obviously, it is for me.

The Mind On Not Enough Sleep Journeys Into Shallow Pools Of Nothingness

I have to stop getting up in the middle of the night. It would be fine if I didn't eat half a bag of Chex Mix at one a.m. I don't even like Chex Mix unless it's the kind that Billy makes. There is no excuse for eating half a bag of Chex Mix because it's not my food.

A lot of foods are not my food, although sometimes I wish they were. Like the other morning after Lily and Jason's ultrasound appointment and I was hungry and wishing I was one of the people who could just cheerfully drive through a fast-food joint and say, "One bacon, egg, and cheese biscuit, please."
Not only are bacon, egg, and cheese biscuits delicious, they save you so much time and money because one of those bad boys and you've had all the fat and calories you need for at least a day.

Maybe a day and a half.
Sigh.
But I'm not.

And Chex Mix is not my food either so why am I eating it at one a.m.?
Yeah. You tell me.

I'm just sitting there waiting for the aspirin to kick in, so tired I can barely understand what I'm reading, eating Chex Mix out of the bag thinking, I don't like this Chex Mix. Why am I eating it?
Well, at least I'm not nursing a tumbler full of vodka, I guess. As if that makes it any better.

We leave for Mexico in two weeks. TWO WEEKS FROM TODAY!

Am I ready? No.

I did go buy new underwear yesterday. For everyone's information my underwear is the Jockey cotton string bikini. It's cotton. Those panties last forever. They are comfortable. Why would I wear anything else? I wore them when I was pregnant because they fit right under the tummy area. Plus, they were cotton. Did I mention they were cotton?

I have about fifteen skirts to take. They're lovely skirts. Many of them are cotton. Some of them are linen. I wear fabrics for the absorbancy factor. Doesn't everyone? They do if they have about fifty hotflashes a day.

Jessie leaves tomorrow for Jamaica where she's going to work in a very rural clinic. I keep asking her questions like "Will there be air-conditioning where you sleep?" She doesn't think so. She thinks the "running water" may be a creek.

Oh boy.

She's here right now, still asleep up in her bedroom. I sort of wish she'd stay there forever. I can understand Rapunzel's parents keeping her locked up in her tower bedroom. I used to love that story. Rapunzel, Rapunzel, let down your hair. If I kept Jessie locked up, she would just smile sweetly and then, when I wasn't looking, she'd throw her long legs over the window sill and climb down, arm over strong arm, then come in the kitchen and offer to wash the dishes. She's that kind of girl. You can't keep these kids locked up in their towers anymore. I swear, no matter how hard you try, you just can't.

This time last year Jason and Lily AND Jessie were all moving out of the house where they'd all been living for a while. It shocked me into craziness. I WANTED them to all move out, have lives of their own. My better-mommy self did. But my lizard mommy wanted them all right here, safe and sound where thunderstorms couldn't hurt them and I could feed them and I could touch them whenever I wanted to. The perfect flesh of my children I could take into my arms and hold.

The first time I ever went to Mexico Lily was two weeks shy of being two. I had never left a child of that age before, even for two nights in a row. And I was about to go off for a week to a foreign country! Lily kept putting her toothbrush in my suitcase. And when we left, I felt so guilty to be leaving her and her sister and brother, even though they were staying in the care of my in-laws, the most loving, sweet people in the world. Lily was crying and then her Paw-Paw said, "Come on Lily. We'll go buy ice cream."

"Okay," she said. "Bye, Mama."

And that was that.

This time I'm leaving her thirty-two weeks pregnant. Jason can buy her ice cream, I suppose.

Oh well. As you can see, my mind is all too tangled up by sleeplessness to write anything decent. What I am saying here? Nothing. I eat Chex Mix in the middle of the night. I need to make a list of things to do before I leave for Mexico. (Buy books, Find inner sex goddess, figure out what happened to Michelle and Adrienne).

And really, what you need to do is go over to Roll Up The Rugs and read what May said about Lily. That's what this whole post is leading up to. Go read what May wrote.
Now there's a post. There is writing. There is love. There is beauty.

I can relax. May's got it covered. I can write about Chex Mix and Jockey string bikinis. And Jessie can go to Jamaica with her long legs. And Lily can gestate and become more beautiful. And Hank can keep the flame going and the chickens alive.
And I can go to Mexico and my food there will look like this:


But I sort of want to put Lily's toothbrush in my suitcase. And Hank's and May's and Jessie's too.

Some things never change.

Go buy some ice cream, babies.

Here are my highlights, Ms. Hope or Ms. Lucy, whoever you are today.

Where are you Adrienne and Michelle? Are you okay? What's going on?

I'm never eating Chex Mix again.

As Promised

Okay. So Lily didn't send me the pee-pee one. This is the one with his pretty little face and I believe that's his fist there, looking like a thought bubble.
Or maybe it is a thought bubble and he's saying, "Get that damn weird ultrasound machine offa my face!"
And as Jason pointed out, we could see him but he couldn't see us.
Not fair.
Oh well. Life isn't fair.
And here's my grandson, floating in his world of the mama's bedwomb (thanks, Xbox and I told you I was stealing it and I meant it.)

It's all a little hazy but it's beautiful to me.

Wonderings

My soul is somewhat soothed today, even if the house is not entirely cleaned. This old house is so rambling. It goes on for days. There's the original four rooms downstairs with a hallway in the middle and upstairs (where I almost never go) and then another, newer room which is now my guest room which then leads to a sort of nothingness room which was once a laundry room (I can tell from the plumbing in it) and which we call the mud room, to Mr. Moon's bathroom which needs to be ripped out and done over and then into our bedroom and finally, it ends up in my bathroom which I call the Bathroom That Oprah Built.

That's because the woman who used to be married to the man whom we bought the house from is a rather famous writer who sold the rights to one of her books to Oprah to make a movie of. Figure it out and it's not Toni Morrison. Sometimes I wish Oprah had paid for some foundation work but that's neither here nor there.

Anyway, all I got cleaned yesterday was that bathroom, our bedroom and Mr. Moon's bathroom because that part of the house takes a long, long time to clean and also, I called a lady in Monticello who does hair to see if she could trim mine (it's been seven months) and give me a few highlights to help with the glamorization of Ms. Moon in Mexico.
She had a cancellation and could fit me in at one forty-five and so off to Monticello I sped and she has her shop in the back of her house and I don't know if my hair looks much better but I had a great time. She has something like fifty-five sons and they were all coming in to check on Mama and see if they could take a walk and that involved a lot of details and so there I was, hair foiled and looking like an alien, sitting under an alien light and one of the youngest boys looked into the little room where I was with eyes like saucers because honestly, I looked ridiculous.
I wasn't embarrassed though. God knows he's seen women in foil hair before.
I waved but he didn't wave back. I think the word to describe what he did would be "fled."

So anyway, I only got the three rooms cleaned and the dogs got a package of venison cube steak I'd set out on the counter to thaw and that's okay because by the time Mr. Moon got home from Orlando, I was too exhausted to cook cube steak and mash any potatoes anyway. Instead I made a salad and that was good enough.

But really what I sort of wanted to talk about was how weird modern life is. I was reading the paper and they're taking the phones out of the offices of the teachers in the history department of FSU as a cost-saving measure. That seems rather dire, doesn't it? But they still have their cell phones and their e-mails and Skype (I don't even know what that is. Wait. I just went and looked. It's an "internet-based teleconference program" but it sounds more like a budget-minded airline to me) so the students CAN get in touch with their professors if they need to.
Or, you know, I suppose they could walk over to the office during office hours and knock on the door.
I'm not saying that professors shouldn't have phones. This seems self-evident.
It's just that sometimes I wonder what would happen if all our modern conveniences were taken away by the push of a button and we were bombed back into the stone age.

Frankly, I think we'd all die. I could probably create a wheel out of something but could I make a battery? Hell no and I wouldn't know what to do with one if I did.
Mr. Moon could kill something for us to eat but we'd die of starvation before I could figure out how to get a fire lit without matches, a lighter or a butane torch to cook the animal on.
Sure, I can grow things but where would I get seeds? And honey, it takes a long time to grow some greens, much less corn which we'd have to grind into grits and there is no waterwheel around here.

Let's face it- the human race would look a lot different a thousand years after being bombed back into the stone age. The people who survived would probably be the people who were already living in the stone age like those Amazonian tribes who wear a string around their waists and know damn well how to start a fire without matches. Who can scrabble together decent meals out of the jungle and who can have their babies without the aid of technology.

When Lily went to get her ultrasound the other day, the tech was amazed that she's somehow managed to get to the point of being 29 weeks pregnant without getting an ultrasound.
"Why?" she asked.
And Lily, whom I am so proud of, said, "We didn't want to unless it was medically necessary."
The tech gave us a funny look as if she'd never heard of such foolishness. Obviously, she's drunk the Kool Aid.
We have all this technology and so we have to use it but the funny thing is- the more technology we have, the less we rely on the way things have worked out for eons and really, a lot of that technology isn't making our outcomes any bit better at all and some are causing a lot of problems but we continue to use them anyway.
Leeches were high-tech at one point and someday we'll look back on the ultrasound with the same humorous disdain that we now look upon the medical use of leeches.

So the history department won't have landlines and neither will any of us in fifty years although they better improve cell phone reception if the people who live in this house want to communicate with others. Our cell phones don't work in this old house and it may be the tin room or it may be the spirits of the people who lived here back when it was built, playfully blocking the signal because they can.

Ha-ha-ha, they say, every time we bolt outside when our cell phones ring.

Well, we humans are clever monkeys. Too clever by half, I would think. I just hope all this stuff we need more and more of keeps working because without it, where would we be?

I'm in the process of making fourteen day pickles and let me tell you this- that is a low-tech operation. I'm taking pictures as I go and I'm sure I'll do a whole post with pictures and a recipe and I know you can't wait for that because sure, everyone has two gallons of cucumbers they don't know what to do with and a crock. I've been making pickles since the donkey was invented and when I started, there were no cell phones, no internet and the only computers in the world had to live in basements where the temperature with a controlled temperature and no dust. So I couldn't show the world how I made them but I gave a lot of them away and shared recipes with other hippie pickle-makers and that was fun.

Fun enough.

I'd call people on my land-line (which we merely called The Phone) and say, "Hey! I made pickles. Come and get some!" and they would and we'd sit around and smoke dope and drink tea and eat pickles and go look at the garden and it was awesome.
I didn't have chickens then but I had children. They ran around naked and played in the Mr. Turtle Pool and made cities in the camellia bushes and somehow, they thought that was fun.

Well, life goes on and I planned on getting the rest of the house cleaned today but Mr. Moon needs me to come do data-entry, which is another thing no one had ever heard of thirty years ago. Well, I hadn't, anyway and sort of wish I hadn't now either.

Excuse me. I have to check on my chickens now.

Sometimes I get confused about what time-period I'm living in. I am just back from yoga now, which is a practice which goes back thousands of years and I was reminded as I breathed and stretched and concentrated on my body in such a slow, intense way of how we are all these corporal beings with something inside we like to call a soul or spirit and how funny it is that we keep pushing the boundaries of what we do to amuse ourselves and how far we've come from the days of having to spend most of our time hunting and gathering. How we have our cars to get us places and our cell phones and televisions and computers to connect and amuse us and there are entire magazines and industries devoted to the simplification of life but really? Who has time to read that stuff, to practice simplification?

I think that just as we all have within us all the ages we've been, the human race does too which is why we love chickens and homegrown food and why we get such pleasure out of the simplest things we do with our hands but we also love the newest gadgets and toys, integrating them into our lives until they seem as necessary as food and water and exercise and love.

But they are not.

And we'd do best to remember that, even as we enjoy them. I think we'd all be better off if we remembered and practiced a few of the things that make us humans, that make us part of this whole cycle of life. The growing of food, the fact that eating animal protein requires killing, birthing our babies in the simplest way possible, trusting all the processes that have gotten us here so far.

And then we can get on our computers and write about it.

As I have just done while somewhere, on another continent, a man leads his cattle out to a place where the grass is sweeter and he knows them all by name and he loves them because they sustain him and his family with their meat, their milk, their blood. I like to think about that. I like to think that as I battle traffic and worry about things like cell phone reception, there are still places on earth where people know how to live with what they can find in the place where they are, whether jungle or plains or desert or beside an ocean or on a mountain so far up that the mist never leaves, the trees never grow very tall and you can see so far that it is impossible to tell whether it is the past you are looking or the future, and the stones underneath the feet have been smoothed by the trodding of hundreds and thousands of generations but are not as smoothed as they will be after another thousand generations have passed.

Or at least, that is what I like to think as I sit in my old house which has seen a few generations itself and the sweet rain begins to trickle down from the sky on my garden, my flowers, my chickens, this ground I have been so blessed to live on in this month of July, this year of 2009, with the very most original communications of my foremothers in my RNA, passed on again and now again by nothing at all but love.

Housekeeping

Okay, so I've been fooling around with the way you get to my comment page. Ms. Fleur says that she could not comment when it went to a page and to please change it so I am now trying the pop-up comment version. If this doesn't work for someone, let me know. My email address is right there on the sidebar because if you can't comment you can't...comment.

Like when you call your wireless provider because your wireless isn't working and they tell you to go the web site, right? Don't you love that?

Anyway, that's that. No big deal.

Hey! It's really raining here!
Mmmmmm....

Yes, There Is Poop. Clean It Up And Sing.

There are spiders everywhere. Everywhere. I go to water the porch plants and walk through a web or pull thorn vines from a tree and end up with banana spiders perched on the brim of my cap. Thank goodness I do not suffer from arachnophobia. I mean, I don't want them crawling on me but I'm not going to go into hysterics if one does.

Lis suggested a long time ago that I write a post entitled Spiders In The Southern Home: Where Do We Draw The Line?

It's hard to know where to draw that line. The one that's making a web that I punch through every time I turn on the porch light has got to go. Meanwhile, the banana spiders on the front porch stay because (a) they trap and eat many mosquitoes, and (b) they're sort of awesome.

I feel sort of like I'm walking through webs these days. Awesomeness and uckiness both at the same time. I am so blessed with so many joys in my life right now that there is more than a whiff of ungratefulness in even saying the word "depression" but there it is. The beautiful spider makes her impossible web and invites our wonder and yet below her is a pile of poop because yes, my darlings, spiders poop. A lot.

Sometimes I think that the more I have to be joyful about, the more depressed I get. And I'm sure a qualified therapist would point out the connection. "You don't feel you have a right to happiness. You feel the NEED to suffer and so if there is nothing to suffer about, you concoct a few on your own."

Okay. That was about five hundred dollars worth of therapy, right there.

Still, there it is.

And when I woke up this morning, my whole soul was drowning in the unbearable honor of what all I've been given and screaming at the obvious injustice of it and yelling that I need to GET MY SHIT TOGETHER YOU WORTHLESS ANIMAL, GOD, CLEAN THE HOUSE AT LEAST! IT'S A PIT! GO TAKE A WALK, DO SOME FUCKING PUSH-UPS, STOP COMPLAINING, LOOK AT WHAT YOU HAVE! YOU'RE GOING TO BE A GRANDMOTHER AND YOU'RE GOING TO MEXICO IN TWO WEEKS AND TWO DAYS! TAKE THE TRASH TO THE DUMP! CLEAN OFF YOUR HUSBAND'S DRESSER!

Yeah. Phew. Too much happiness sends me right down the tubes.

Okay, okay. I hear you. Some days are meant for action, not inward reflection. And I know it.

I just made the very best smoothie ever. Yogurt, pineapple, strawberries, blueberries, flax, prunes (they make it sweet AND add fiber), almonds and banana. I am going to take a walk. I am going to bust my ass over this house today. I am going to make it pretty and clean and smelling of Fabuloso, white vinegar and Murphy's Oil soap. I am going to cherish this old house with my sweat and pick fresh flowers to put in vases in it.

I am going to be grateful for my blessings and I am going to cherish them. Go read HoneyLuna's post and see how much I have to be grateful for- and she is just one quarter of my children. If you are new to this blog, two of my other children have blogs, too. They are Downtown Guy and Miss Maybelle. The other child, Lily, is too busy working and creating life in her womb to blog. She is writing her life with action.

All right. I feel better. Spider poop and dust and need-to-suffer and all. I'll go take my walk and that should take care of the rest of that need, although it's not supposed to get over 85 degrees today which will feel like a vacation on the Swiss Alps, I'm sure.

And also let me say that I am thinking of Lon and Lis today who are celebrating their thirtieth wedding anniversary. THIRTY YEARS of sweetness and hard work and music together. Here is a picture I snagged off the internet of them onstage. Another major blessing in my life is their friendship.


They both have their eyes closed and have smiles on their faces. I think they are singing a love song, their voices dipping and blending and sweetening each other with the harmony that only two people who have been loving and playing together for over thirty years can create.

Happy anniversary, you two. I love and adore you.

And happy day to all of us.
Now. Let's fight our ways out of all the many webs we manage to get tangled in.
Let's get moving.

Precious, Joyful Day. When I Wasn't Hitting My Head With A Brick.

I had anxiety-shot dreams all night long, mostly along the lines of being at Lily's house and having to get ready for her ultrasound appointment. I hadn't brought the right clothes. Where was my bra? What would I wear? We would be late and it would be my fault, etc., etc., etc.
To add to the fun, the electricity went out in the middle of the night and so what time was it really? What about the alarm?

Ya-ya-ya-ya-ya.

But of course you know I got up on time and got to town and picked up Lily and Jason and we drove to the doctor's office where the ultrasound was to be done and there we were in the dark room, Jason up by Lily's shoulder and me next to him and the tech named Marie and there he was, that little dickens, that possessor of a heart with four chambers, kidneys, a bladder, a spine, eyes, mouth, nose, hands, feet and yes, a penis.

My grandchild has a penis which generally means we're getting a boy child.
A boy child.
Lily is having a boy.

We all cried. Well. Not the tech named Marie or the doctor. But Marie handed me a box of Kleenex and I doubt seriously I was the first grandmother to cry in that room and probably not the last one today, either.

There are pictures but I don't have my hands on any and you know what? They don't mean squat to me. I do like how one of the ones they printed out has a little arrow pointing to the pee-pee. That's one for the baby book!

We met Granddaddy Moon down at the bank and showed him the pictures and he was mighty happy. We all cried again or hell, I did, anyway. And let me ask you this- why is that Mr. Moon is looking too damn gorgeous and fit and muscle-y these days, way too handsome and young to be a granddaddy (he was wearing his Levi's today and well, DAMN! they look so good on him!) and me? Oh yeah, I look like a grandmother.

And how vain of me is it to be discussing something as ridiculously unimportant as the way I look versus the way my husband looks in the SAME paragraph as I discussed crying about how happy I was to have seen my grandchild's four ventricles working, opening, closing, the blood flowing through them, the very most intricate architecture of his spine and his ribs, his hands, his feet, his head, oval and beautiful like an egg, just laid- the very structure and evidence of life? The life of my own, my very own grandchild, one quarter me, one quarter Mr. Moon, one-entire-half of my daughter, my very own miracle, Lily?

Well, because I am vain and because directly after I took Lily and Jason home and hugged and kissed them and cried a little bit more and told them a million thank-yous for allowing me the honor of being with them in that dark room with Marie and her magic, I went and tried on bathing suits with Jessie.

So that explains THAT and there you have it.

I was telling Kathleen about trying on bathing suits and she said, "Well why didn't you just go and hit your head with a brick?" and she was right. If Jessie hadn't been continuously cracking me up with her shimmy shakes to see how her bosoms worked in each and every suit she tried on, I might have just gone and done that- hit my head with a brick- because it would have been just as effective at making me miserable.

Here it is- no matter what I eat, what exercise I do, and how much I care, I just have to face that fact that I am a little old round woman and that, my friends, is that.
Ah well.
And then Jessie got a call on her phone from a nurse telling her that the MRI she got last week showed multiple tears and cysts in her knee and that yes, she definitely needs to go see an orthopedic guy. "I don't know how you've stood the pain," the nurse said.

Her father and I have been telling her for years that of course her knees hurt- she's a growing girl of almost six feet in height although really, I couldn't figure it out. She's not at all overweight and it's not like she's played basketball since fourth grade, the way her daddy did. And yes, he had both knees repaired by her age so IT'S NOT MY FAULT, do you hear?
THERE IS NOTHING WRONG WITH MY KNEES! as one of my characters in a play I was in recently said.

And that's a day in the life.

The most ecstatic, ethereal and magic moment of my life as a grandmother (so far) and then the deep bitter grief over my old-lady round body (really- I was walking around Dilliards thinking, I miss the Beatles. I miss the Rolling Stones. I miss MY BODY!) like some fruitcake and then hearing that I've let my baby go on in pain for a very long time due to my negligence in not really taking her complaints seriously. I should have known- she's not a complainer.

Ah well.

And now I'm home and I've mucked out the chicken coops and picked some cucumbers and some bell peppers and Kathleen brought me some extremely lovely and delicious looking nutloaf and I am going to chop up mint and cucumbers in Greek yogurt and eat some of that for my supper. Mr. Moon is out of town and I am alone with all these various joys and bitternessess and self-recrimination and so, you see, life is normal, life is ordinary, life is a miracle, life is good.

We are trying to think of names for our little boy and I like the name Henry. Lily and Jason? Not so much.

"You could ask your blog people," Lily said. And so I shall. What should Lily and Jason name my grandson? Their last name begins with an "H" so there is that, if you, like me, are a fan of alliteration.

I wish I had a picture from the ultrasound. I will get one. Probably the one with his sweet little pee-pee. Sticking straight up.

Of course.

And so it begins.

Joy.

You've Given Me A Ya-Ya (Apologies To George Harrison)

I've got the Sunday bluesie blahs and I'm sitting here, sweating and stinking from a walk and don't feel like worshiping at any church today, not even the Church of Batshit Crazy, maybe more like drowning in the Church of Good God I Suck.
Who knows why these spells come upon us? I mean really. Sarah Palin has resigned as governor of Alaska and I can't even summon enough caring to wonder why.

We had a most laid-back Fourth. Mr. Moon got a new chain saw to replace the one the thieves purloined a few months ago and he spent the day trimming back a fence line next to our neighbor's where our trees were leaning on their sheds. He worked himself into an exhausted puddle of man and I did very little beyond trimming some of the Confederate jasmine which is pulling the fence over with its weight. That and some laundry and I took a nap.
I came alive somewhat in the early evening and we gave the chicks some watermelon which wasn't fit for human consumption as it had no flavor at all. The chickens didn't care. They loved it, both the hens and the biddies.
Here are the hens enjoying their fruit servings for the day:


And here are the babies:



Please note the size disparity between Elmira (at approximately eleven o'clock on the circle of chickens above) and the others. It is as if she has stuck at peep-size and I wonder if there is such a thing as a banzai chicken. Her little legs are like twigs compared to Henry's, the brown bird there whose legs are like stout saplings, the better to bear his prodigious weight. I do think he is a man bird. His comb is coming in red and thick. When we lift the roof of the young bird's pen, they try to escape and the day is coming soon when they shall be let out to fend with the big girls but I am afraid to let out Elmira because she is so small she will be able to simply walk out through the wire of the cage, making her easy prey for hawks and snakes.

Oh, dear Elmira! We have not kept you going this long to let a cousin bird have you for a meal!

Anyway, la-di-dah and so forth and I made a supper of venison backstrap and mashed butternut squash (I cooked the male one) with maple syrup and cinnamon and a salad some brown and wild rice.
And that was the Fourth of July.

On my walk this morning I saw that most of the butterfly peas, more formally known as Clitoria ternatea had finished blooming and I was mad at myself because I had wanted to get a picture but of course google images has a million of them. Here's one:


Well. There are no words needed for that little beautiful piece of flowerly deliciousness.
I have been thinking about flowers and their connection to the flower of the woman, if you will, because begonias seem to give us blooms that are similar too.


There is one of mine. Begonia's, that is.

On another day I would probably be able to spin something poetic and lovely concerning the comparison of a blossom with a woman but I am not poetic or lovely today. I am feeling sludgy and drudgy and full of self-loathing for no apparent reason. I haven't been off the property except to walk in days and days and we're out of milk and Hank called to see if I wanted to meet up with him and some of his crew at the flea market and I should. Not because I need any damn thing at all the flea market sells, but because I could hang out with the Hankster.
And yet, I feel no compulsion to get in my car and drive the miles there although I am listening to a book on CD in the car that is overdue and I'm enjoying it. It's Christopher Moore's A Dirty Job and if you haven't read it, I think it's a lot of fun and worth reading.


I am also about to finish up another book I'm listening to, this one on tape and it is a majestic recording of a very good book called Cloud Atlas by David Mitchell. This one I have been listening to through countless bouts of weeding, walking, trimming and sweeping. I am going to be so sad when I'm done although the library would like it back now, please.

And with my eyes (thank you, May) I am reading Wally Lamb's The Hour I First Believed and I wish I hadn't read it yet but instead, had it packed away for Mexico. I need to get out and buy some books to take with me to Mexico because I plan on letting myself fall into reading there, great gulps of reading of books I hold in my hand, lying beside the ocean, or in my bed.
Any suggestions?
No teen-aged vampires or post-atomic blast dystopia, please.

And so it goes and I need to shower and decide what I'm doing today besides feeling inadequate in every way, and overwhelmed by the simplest tasks.

Summer has peaked, it seems to me. The blackberries are not worth the effort at this point, the garden is at a place where things are either not ready or done.

I feel the same.

I am neither ready nor done and I am not sure for what in either case but today is a day of feeling set quite solidly in the middle of nothingness and not willing to make the effort to pull myself out of this brackish river which is not flowing at all, just still and between tides, not chilly or hot, perhaps the exact temperature as the air and my body, and I feel as if I am floating here, looking up at the sky which doesn't even have a cloud floating past to give me any sense of movement whatsoever.

And I suppose that's okay. I can rest with my flowers and the swamp mallow is blooming in the woods and the giant begonia has no bloom at all, just huge leaves which are enough, plenty enough, and I am wondering if that track I saw on the dirt road was gator track and the day proceeds, even if I can not feel it.

Okay, Okay, Okay

Because I am an American and because I am a child of the sixties and because there IS one version of the Star Spangled Banner that raises the hairs on the back of my neck, I will give you this even though I have posted it before. It's appropriate:

Be Careful With The Fireworks And Believe Me- The Cops Are Looking To Arrest Drunk Drivers

Happy Fourth of July, y'all. And do you have all your plans in order? Are you going to be grilling various vile, delicious meat products? Watching someone set off fireworks? Standing in your driveway with a sparkler? Drinking beer from an ice chest? Eating watermelon or making a cake with blue berries and strawberries on it? Wearing a Lady Liberty plastic head thingee? Kayaking, swimming, fishing, going to the beach, making a Jello mold? Listening to some country music guy singing about the good ol' US of A and crying when he sings, "I'm proud to be an American because blahdeblahdeblah"?

Well, good for you.

As I have said so many times before, I have neither the religion gene or the patriotism gene. I did nothing to get born here and if my mother had just been a few miles south (I was born in El Paso) crossing an imaginary border (yes, I have done LSD, why do you ask?) to have me, I would have been celebrating Cinco de Mayo rather than Fourth of July and I like tamales better than I like hamburgers so none of it makes much sense to me.

I didn't do a damn thing to create independence from Britain, nor do I well up when I hear the Star Spangled Banner. When I am in a situation where I am forced to say the Pledge Of Allegiance, (and I avoid those situations, believe me)- I always follow the last words- with liberty and justice for all with the words, "We wish."

No, no, no. I am not a Communist. Well, I don't know. Maybe I am but that's not the point. The point is- I am not what you'd call patriotic although when Obama got elected I sort of had an inkling of what it feels like to be proud of your country. Really. I did.

I suppose besides not having the gene, part of my problem is that my formative years were spent watching my government send young, mostly poor men off to Viet Nam to be slaughtered and to slaughter innocent women, children, and ancient old people for no apparent reason. Also, there was that whole Kent State thing and the Chicago Democratic convention where even Dan Rather got beaten up by the cops. And oh yes, Richard M. Nixon and Ronald Reagan and Do. Not. Get. Me. Started. About. G.W. Bush. who got elected by the really brilliant citizens of this great country not ONCE but TWICE.

See- I like to have a reason to believe my country is great and all the jingoism and Uncle Sams dancing around in the world doesn't do it for me and neither does us being in Iraq or in Afganistan.

Although I do love the blues and jazz, well, jazz is jazz and I totally respect it.

So here's what I do love about America:

-B.B. King. King of the Blues. He's my daddy. You don't think so? Prove he's not. Go ahead.

-Mark Twain. No explanation necessary.

-NPR.

-Levis and other denim products. Not with that fucking spandex in them, either. That is NOT American, okay?

-Our bathrooms. Our bathrooms rock. So does our toilet paper.

-Macintosh computers. I don't care where they're made, Steve Jobs is American. I think. Although that Waz guy does not have a very American name, I think he is too.

-The First Family. I love every one of them. Even the dog. Whatever it's name is.

-The Band. Okay, half of them are dead and some of them were Canadian but I still love them.

-Ice. Nothing says I Am American like a love for lots of ice in our drinks and if that is true, then I am as American as anyone on earth.

Okay. That about wraps it up for me.

Mr. Moon and I will be spending the day at home. I have venison in the crockpot. I am going to work in the yard. I may drink beer. I wish we had a kiddie pool to fill up and get in naked but we don't.

Oh- after watching the video above, I'll add the Hammond B3 Organ to my list of things I love about America. Oh hell, I'll throw in Fender AND Gibson guitars. And Martins. Why not?

We got some great stuff here in this country. We really do. And I know it.

Enjoy celebrating all of it that you love if you are, in fact, in this country.

And if you're reading this from another country, believe me when I say that I think your country is probably great too and if you let me know when you celebrate your country's greatness, I'll celebrate it with you.

And if you're a NATIVE American, let me just say, "Forgive us."

Love....Ms. Moon

Hello, Hello! Are You There?

No. A child did not draw that. I did.

I started a new journal last night. My old one was not filled but it was so full of last summer's crazy fear that I cannot bear to open it, much less write new words in it.
May got me the new journal for Mother's Day and until last night, I had not written a thing in it except for my name and address and where it said, "As a reward $...." I wrote, "You will go to heaven."

But last night I was in the middle of writing my last post and the electricity went out as the thunder and lightening cracked and the air became chill and the sky let loose all the water it had in it, I got out the journal and began to write real words with real ink on real paper. I used to journal quite a bit before I started this blog. Now I hardly ever do, but I know I will want a journal in Cozumel and so I began it last night.

It's funny how a pen in my hand can loosen my mind up. There is something completely different about writing words on paper than writing words on a computer. I have always loved to hand-write, although my words weren't so neatly done last night. It was fairly dark, even on the back porch, even after I lit a candle, and I am out of practice, which seems absurd. I hardly even write checks anymore, I just use my debit card and as to letters- well, e-mail has replaced them which is so sad. There will be nothing left of so many communications when we are gone.

But that's not what I wanted to talk about. What I wanted to talk about was the realization I had when the rain was pouring and the dog was cowering on my lap and my pen was in my hand and that was this:
I believe that some women deny their aging with plastic surgery and cosmetics and hair dye and constant gym-attendance and even the taking of a younger lover, while I have gone another way. I think the seemingly obsessive need I have to work outside in the heat, to garden, to dig, even my walks, are the way I keep myself in denial about getting older. If I can do this, I think, as I walk down the dusty lanes, in this heat, then I am NOT old.

I honestly think that my yard work and another woman's having a young boyfriend probably have more in common than you would imagine.

And it's funny how both are such southern stereotypes.
There is the stereotype of the aging southern woman with a gin and tonic in one hand, the other flat on the chest of some young buck half her age and then the other stereotype which is summed up by the Ouiser character from Steel Magnolias when she said, as my son pointed out the other day, "I'm an old Southern woman. We're suppose to wear funny old hats, ugly dresses, and grow things in the dirt. I didn't make the rules."

And this old southern woman definitely belongs in category two. I am genetically incapable of putting the moves on any man besides my husband. I'm hardly able to do that!

And as I wrote about this upcoming trip to Cozumel, I wondered what it will be like to take my crazy old southern yard-working, ugly-clothes wearing self to the island where all my visits have had so much to do with being a girl. A girl who dresses up and puts on her silver to go out to dinner every night, a girl who wears eye-shadow, a girl who has no house or yard duties at all. A girl who used to charm the boys. Once, when we visited, a guy who worked at the hotel where we were staying fell a little bit in love with me. He wrote me love poems in fact, and bravely and boldly gave them to me, all signed with my husband's name. I suppose he thought that way Mr. Moon would not pummel him into a bit of Mayan porridge.

It was funny but it was sweet and here's the thing- Mr. Moon used to write me poems in Cozumel too. They were short and silly and funny as hell and I'd print one here but he'd kill me. He would. He'd kill me.

But where is that girl, that sunset-drink girl, that mermaid-eyed happy girl who inspired poetry, who felt such a woman, such a pretty woman, on those trips? Is she still in me or have I killed her with mulch and chicken shit, dirt-stained overalls and ugly hats?

And that's what that picture is all about. I tried to draw the overalled me holding a chicken, standing under a tree in the hot sun on one side and a pretty-dressed me, holding a seashell under a moon beside the water on the other.

Obviously, I cannot draw. But I like to try sometimes. Just like I like to try figuring things out that should probably be left to instinct.

Ah well.

We shall see if there is still a girl inside of this old liver-spotted woman. I pray that there will be at least a glimmer of her in the moonlight as I walk with my husband, wearing a dress and my silver. I do. I think my husband truly misses that girl which is probably why he's taking me to Mexico.

I miss her too.

I hope I find her, there on the island of Cozumel set inside the beautiful Caribbean sea like a jewel.

I hope she's waiting. Wouldn't that be lovely?

If she is, I'll write about her in my journal. I'll even try and draw her picture.

I think she'll have a big smile on her face. And she will definitely not be wearing overalls.

The Weather Within Us

Back when I was a younger woman, in the days when I still had a functioning uterus and so forth, there would be those times of the month when tears and anger and all sorts of crazy emotions would take me over and I know you know what I'm talking about. PMS. Yeah. Good ol' PMS. And then, when I was ovulating, I was so happy and filled with the juice of joyful well-come-on, then! and I'd wear my silver and put on eye-makeup and bat my mascared eyes at the husband.
And I could examine my feelings and the calender and it all made a certain sense. It may not have made the PMS times easier but it did give me a certain comfort, knowing that within a week I would not feel so crazy. I could get the knives out of hiding again, I could watch a TV commercial without tearing up. I could know why I wanted to make a baby, even though I didn't really want another baby.

But now. Oh now. Where are the hormones, those drugs of the body which cause the brain and the blood to boil and simmer and shiver and shimmy? Flatlined, that's where they are. No more cycles, just...a certain sameness unless you count the insanity which came on me this time last year and still seems to want to whisper in my ear at times, blowing anxiety and a bit of depression up my skirts.
Ah yah.

And so it's a tender self-regard that I have when something moves me deeply, when I am so filled with something so big it fills my heart and spills over and today was one of those days when that happened.

As I'm writing this, the wind has picked up and the trees are stirred and whipping, twisting and bowing and the sky is growing dark. I wonder if there's a tornado nearby. I check the weather and this is what it says is about to hit me:

In addition to large hail and damaging winds... frequent cloud to ground lightning is occurring with these storms. Move indoors immediately! Lightning is one of nature's number one killers. Remember... if you can hear thunder... you are close enough to be struck by lightning.

And in the time it took me to look that up, copy and paste it, call Mr. Moon and warn him as he's about to get on the road to home, the rain has begun to tumble down. I see no hail, but it surely has cooled down about twenty degrees in the last five minutes.

And this is how my emotions seemed today. I was fine this morning, completely fine, and I walked and went and picked up Lily to go see her new midwife. She has been moved from the Birth Center practice to a hospital-based midwifery practice because she has had some high blood pressure issues and this was to be her first appointment with them. This practice has at its head a doctor whom I think walks on water and believe me, I do not say this lightly. I've written about him before. If you would like to read about a real, honest American hero, go here. He is, well... if anything goes wrong with my daughter's pregnancy, I want HIM to be there.
And his office was busy, women with huge bellies coming and going and children and babies and when the nurse was taking care of Lily, she was holding a baby- one of a set of twins we'd seen come in earlier with two very young parents.

"Could I hold her?" I asked.
"Of course," the nurse said and she handed the tiny mite off to me and I held her for about five or ten minutes and I kept looking from this content little human in her pink outfit to my daughter and I cried. I am crying now, thinking of this child I was so lucky to get to hold today. And I kept thinking of how wonderful it's going to be when I get to hold Lily's baby. This is real. This is happening.
I handed her back when it was time and the midwife came in and I fell in love with her immediately. She's about my age, I suppose, and it turns out that she had six children at home and has also adopted five AND she's a certified nurse midwife in a very busy practice. She made me at once feel comfortable and trusting and also incredibly inadequate in every way. She had gray hair and wore an air of reassurance and capability that I found...soothing. She addressed all the different issues that can come up in a pregnancy where there is maternal high blood pressure and she is sending Lily for lab work and to a perinatal neonatologist for an ultrasound to check the cord's flow and so forth and after all my protestations against such things, Lily will not only be getting an ultra-sound, but one of the 4-D ones which sort of scares us both. But I trust this woman, I do. She seemed to be very happy to have a patient who wants to birth naturally. She says she doesn't get a lot of women who are "educated and trust their bodies and the process," but it's always a special delivery when she does.
And so you see- I know we are doing the exact right thing here. This woman, and Dr. Brickler, if need be, will be watching over things.
She listened to the baby and pronounced that it sounded great and also, that it sounds like a girl. Hmmm.
I suppose we shall find out on Monday at eight a.m. when I'll be going with Lily and Jason to get that ultrasound.

Jessie met us and we all went to lunch and I kept telling Lily what I truly believe which is that all is going to be well with her and this child. I have no feeling of fear or anxiety about that, which is strange, since I am anxious about everything else in the world. But about this coming child? No. I get only the sense that all is well.

After lunch we went to a store where they sell baby-things and we sat in all the comfy mommy rockers and Lily tried on some maternity clothes and Jessie and I chatted while sitting in some of the comfy mommy rockers. She's about to go off to Jamaica in eight days for a medical outreach program and the thought of her doing this DOES cause me anxiety. I know she'll be fine, but still- my baby going so far away, being in the the poorest area of one of the poorest places- it gives my heart pause, even as I am so glad she's going to get to go. And as we talked and I thought about how my children are all so far out of the reach of my protective wings, I began to cry again. Big, whelping tears and I wasn't embarrassed at all.

"One of the worst nights of my life," I told Jessie, "Was when I had a miscarriage when Hank was six months old and they wouldn't let him spend the night with me in the hospital and it was my first time to be separated from him and it was so hard, so horrible." I thought a moment and then I admitted, "I have always been overattached."

And I know I have been. But that's the sort of mother I am, whether for good or for bad and it's been a difficult thing for me to let my babies go. I don't think they know exactly how difficult. I've tried to be the kind of mother who encourages her children to go and do and be themselves, live their own lives.
But there is part of me which wishes I could always keep them here, quite literally, within arm's length so that I can reach out and protect them from anything that may threaten them.

And that's what made me cry, I think- holding that baby and thinking of how easy it was to protect my children when they were babies. How perfectly they fit into my arms where they were safe and how hard it was to watch them take those steps and short flights away from me. And it keeps happening. I can't protect Jessie when she's in Jamaica. I can't protect Lily from things I cannot control. But I can do what I can do and I can go with her to the appointments with the people who know how to protect her and I can reassure her that all will be well, even if all doesn't go exactly as she wanted it to.

It's hours later now. The storm cut off our electricity for awhile and Mr. Moon came home and we ate dinner and I'm trying to finish this up. Trying to figure out what it was that I was trying to say and I think it's this - I woke up this morning calm, like the sky was, and before the day was over, my emotions had collided with each other like the cold front colliding with the heat and a storm broke out inside of me like the storm broke out over my head here in Lloyd.
Just because I don't have a cycle now, doesn't mean that there are not factors which, when they come together, are going to cause disturbances in the weather of my soul.

But you know, even with all the weather people's knowledge and high-tech tools and radar and satellite images they still don't always know exactly what the weather will end up being. And I, even with all my knowledge of how my very own psyche works can't always predict what's going to happen to cause me to break out in tears. I didn't foresee holding someone's beautiful baby, her very physical presence in my arms loosening up something inside of me that let the tears flow. I didn't predict meeting a midwife who birthed her babies at home, who delivers babies day and night but who looked at my daughter and said to her, "Your delivery will be special."

One never knows and now it's time for bed and I'm ready to give it all up and sleep and see where these emotions are tomorrow. What the state of my heart will be in, whether in joy or in pain or in fear or in trust and faith in whatever the future holds.

And there is something good about that. We are not machines and we can have feelings that wash us clean or clog us up or let us fly or make us hide or force us to reach out our arms for a new life, at least for a few moments.

I am glad of that. Even if I can't predict what is coming, what I'll be feeling, I know I'll be feeling something. And then that will pass and I'll be feeling something else.

We can't always predict the weather. But we can predict that the sun will come up, the moon will pass through its phases, pulling the tides this way and that, even the tides within us, even if they are no longer blood tides, crimson and rich but are less visible tides, made up of tears and something else. Our wombs may no longer be open and able to create life but our hearts can still be open to it. So can our arms, our souls, and we can still bow and bend to the universe and its strong, invisible tuggings.

We are still part of the mystery. We are still part of life.

So. This Is What It's All About

Here's me, being so geeky that I'm watching a show on PBS about the making of Prairie Home Companion. Having a hot flash.

I'm tired. I'm having a hard time getting to sleep at night. Oh, I fall asleep but then I wake up, generally with a hot flash or maybe with my hips hurting or my hand going numb. Something. Some thing which is a result of the age I've attained or else some way I've wracked my body in the course of my years. And then I go back to sleep but I wake up a few minutes later and after a few cycles of this, I just get up for awhile and go out to the kitchen and read and eat things I shouldn't but I don't feel guilty about that. Not like I'm eating a cake or a pot roast or anything.
Just something soothing, like maybe cereal and it's so quiet at that time of night with the dogs asleep and maybe snorffling a little as they dream and the refrigerator humming and then stopping, and the sounds of the night crickets and frogs outside thrumming through the walls.
And eventually, my body is soothed and so is my mind and I go back to bed and fall asleep beside my sleeping husband.

I am at the age where I like being soothed, which is why I guess I like Garrison Keillor so much. I love it when he does the It's been a quiet week in Lake Wobegon part and half the time I don't even follow the story. I just listen to his voice as he talks, that way of speaking he has which people make fun of but which I can't get enough of. He's probably one of the whitest white men on the planet but I don't care about that, either. He doesn't pretend to be one damn thing he is not. He's a large, funny-looking white man from Minnesota who, according to what I am watching right now, is not afraid to sing in the rain for an audience of people sitting in a softball field with umbrellas to watch his show.

"We see the world clearly when we are children," he says. "And we spend the rest of our lives trying to remember what we saw."
That's not cosmic or even profound, but it's probably true. And that's soothing too- to hear things that are true but not trumpeted as Words To Live By.

He was just talking about the way he felt after his daughter was born and he'd just held her naked, newborn, six-pound body and he was so stunned at how ordinary birth is, and yet how amazing, and how amazing it is that it's so ordinary.

"I was afraid of living an ordinary life," he says, "And I realized, that's what everybody gets. And that's good enough."

That's so comforting to hear somehow. I think we all want to be different and amazing and famous and wonderful and the best, the very best at something and then, life goes on and we do finally realize that the most amazing things of all are the very most ordinary. The things that happen every day of our lives are the small miracles which add up to so much more than any of that other stuff would have.

God, it's all such a cliche, but it's true.

The way the light looks on my flowers when the sun is setting, the way the birds sound in the morning, the way the frogs sound at night. The way I can pick things out of my garden and cook them or pickle them and we can eat them and they give us pleasure and sustain us and the way the work I do to grow them sustains me too. The small and very important miracle of discovering a new book which is wonderful, a new song, a new bug I've never seen before. The discovery that I love chickens in my yard. My husband coming home every night and kissing me and telling me what a great supper! every night and the way yeast and flour come together with water and salt to make something incredibly delicious and that fills my house with a smell so good that you want to eat the air with butter and honey on it.
The fact that I can get up in the night and be soothed with a book and a bowl of cereal and then go lie back down beside that man and I like it when he snores- that soothes me too- and then fall into the ordinariness of sleep, one of my favorite things to do.

Tomorrow morning I'm going with Lily to the midwife and there you have the miracle of the most ordinary, like the one Mr. Keillor was talking about. Is my daughter really about to become a mother?
Yes. And soon.
And when she has her baby, it will be as if she had created life for the first time ever in the universe and in a way, it will be. It will be the first time that life has ever been created. That particular piece of life with its own unreasonably unique and individual DNA swirled and formed into a child with eyes and lips and hands and a sense of rhythm (surely) and a talent for art (maybe) with his or her own charms and strengths and weaknesses and hair color and fingernails and all of it will be there, right from the second she or he is born. A child who will see the world clearly and then spend the rest of his or her life trying to remember what he or she saw.
Just like every one of us.
Every damn one of us ordinary incredible miracles.

Maybe that's what blessourhearts is all about and I just realized it. That what I want to write about is the ordinary things, nothing more and nothing less. The kids, the husband, the gardens, the trees, the chickens, the dirt, the recipes, the bugs, the birds, the walks, the friends, the aging, the aches, the pains, the joys, the love, the light.

All the ordinary things which are good enough to make up an ordinary life which is filled with miracles every day.
My life, for example. My ordinary, miraculous life.

And that is good enough. Good enough for me.

And I am incredibly soothed by that thought.

You Can't Make This Stuff Up (But Sometimes You Can Grow It In Your Garden)

Veggie porn is a cheap gardener's trick. We go out to see what's there and mother nature has had a chuckle with us in the night. We pick it, bring it in, take its picture and say, "Thanks! Mother Nature!"
Or something like that.
It's still fairly early and I have hay fever and the air is visible with mist and humidity (they are not one and the same, though one would think they are) and the roosters to the west of me crow and my chickens are pecking and clucking in their pen.
The trifecta which always seems to occur in things-that-happen, happened to me in the last few days. I lost power, water, and then wireless.
Luckily they all came back on or got fixed quite quickly and I hope that was that- small inconveniences that only served to make me more grateful for what I have.

I have been thinking about this South Carolina Governor, Mark Sanford and his fall from grace, his family-values politics all shown to be what they really are- hot air and people-pleasing rhetoric while he has come close to "crossing the ultimate line" with more than one woman and fallen hard in love with another. What line was that? I wonder. Did that mean he didn't put his butternut in those other women's squashes? Does it mean he did put it in but he didn't fall in love? Until now, that is.

What?

But who cares? Not me. This whole family-values-politician-who-fucked-around-and-got-busted thing is getting so common that I can't even sum up a good case of schadenfreude.
But the man won't shut up. He's got some issues, this guy. Obviously. And he seems to want to talk about them. Over and over again.

And from my perspective, that perspective being that of a long-married woman with four children, I have to say that if I were his wife, I would kick his butt so hard they'd have to use the jaws of life to get my foot out of his worthless ass. Really. Maybe he's ready to try and fall back in love with his wife (his words) but what in the world makes him think she'd let him?

"I owe it too much to my boys and to the last 20 years with Jenny to not try this larger walk of faith," he said.

Yeah, see, if I were Jenny Sanford, I don't think this sort of talk would do anything to woo my heart back. It sounds like he's decided to voluntarily put himself back into his cell on death row. For the sake of his children, of course. For the sake of his faith, you see. For the sake of the twenty years he has had with his wife. For the sake of all of that he's willing to give up what he himself has called his "soul mate."

Dude.

"This was a whole lot more than a simple affair, this was a love story," Sanford said. "A forbidden one, a tragic one, but a love story at the end of the day."

Speaking as a wife, speaking as a mother, if my husband were saying shit like this I'd not be inclined to ever share a house or a bed with him again. Much less a life. I mean please- trust has not only been broken, he's taken every bit of the delicate crystal of the vessel of his marriage and ground it into a fine deadly powder which will never, no matter how carefully they try, be removed from their sheets, their clothes, their floors, the air they breathe.

Again I have to say-
Dude.
Be a man. Own up to your passions (if that's what they are) and go be with your love, your soul mate. Make a new life which includes time with your sons. Throw off the chains that bind and fly down to Argentina and don't come back. You had a life being a husband, father and governor and now you don't.
And let your wife have a life, too, while you're at it. Not some harrowing existence where she's always aware that you're thinking of a girl named Maria instead of her.
Why in the world would you think that after what you've done you can fix things up with the help of Jesus so that your family is healthy and whole again? Babe. That train has left the station.

And here's the thing- I think Mark Sanford knows this. I think he's just saying all this shit so that his wife will really leave him.
Talk about your self-sabotage.

It's not the men who cheat and get busted who freak me out. Mother Nature will have her chuckle. It's the women who stand by their men, trying to hold their heads up and look like they're not completely crushed and vowing to take their men back and forgive them.
And Jenny Sanford has not done this. She's not talking to the press very much, she's not visible, she's removed herself from the picture. She is not following the rules!
And good for her.
She can have a life if she chooses to. A life that does not include living with a man who is obviously not in love with her. A life that doesn't make her bleed to death from a thousand tiny cuts every moment of her days and nights.

And I hope that's what she decides to do. Kick the boy loose. Let him go. See if Maria will enfold him in her luscious Latina arms.

Jenny and her sons will be the better off for it. And so will South Carolina.

I don't know about Mark. I don't know if he'll be better off or not but guess what? I don't care.
And I hope Jenny can get to the place where she doesn't either because she's too busy having a better life of her own.

So well, that's what I'm thinking about today.
That and pickles.
And going to Mexico in three weeks where I'll be Maria Luna who is (and believe me when I say this) a completely different woman than plain old Mary Moon. Maria Luna will be dancing with her soul mate. Uh-huh. The one Mary Moon is making pickles for.

I'm not waiting for my well to run dry to know how important my water is. I already know.

I think Mark Sanford thinks he's found another well. A better well. With sweeter water and an endless supply of it. He should go there, where that water is, and not resign himself and his wife and his sons to some bitter tainted small stream of murky slop out of a weird sense of responsibility. He's the one who mucked that water up in the first place and now he should do everyone a favor and get his shit out of there. Let his wife and kids try to clear things up without him.

Well, that's what I think. And so does Maria Luna.
What about you?