twoandneveranymore

I'm spun black, caught in my own mad web.  For watching my own beautiful children grow stuffs my heart in a jar.

Everyday, my eyes drink in their small miracles.  Skin stretching over bones.  Minds flying.  Fingers carving letters on paper.  My lids fluttering from the magic.  Until they sleep -- and I push my face greedily into their hair.   Breathe deeply, searching for babyness -- round faces, rolled thighs, black, shining eyes.  Reality slaps without mercy as I stand in line at the grocery store, a baby-in-bucket-mother next-in-line.  A pregnant-bellied-woman washing her hands next to me at the airport.   White heat-rising, my web pulls tight.  I see my selfish self clearly.

My twoandneveranymore children.  A phrase someone I adore used the day she realized her two, were indeed her last.   For some it's oneandneveranymore.  Others four.  And some, none.  No matter the number, the day appears.  And defines - carving lines thick and blue as veins.  And brings with it either a wave of relief, or wall of grief.  And the wonder that our days are indeed racing past us like rain.  Mytwoandneveranymore.  I swallow the words like stones.  Mytwoandneveranymore.  Mytwoandneveranymore.  My heart pushes against its own walls, sharp and thin.

I push the dull ache down to my toes, only to feel it rise bit-by-bit all day, then settle in my heart as I lie my head down at night.  The realness of their growth, a blue flame, singeing my skin.  I'm ablaze from the sheer heat of needing to be a young mom again.  Of wanting their babyness back.

Twoandneveranymore.

I mend with the truth.  Long zagging stitches.  Filling the holes from the inside out - pushing-into, stitching-up, guarding the raw spaces.  And let their smallness slip away.  I ink the smell, the feel, the memory of baby deep inside - a ball of white light hidden under my skin.  It glows.  Its warmth, a reminder to be grateful.  

My twoandneveranymore.  I am getting there.  One day at a time.

Film

Film.

Reminds me what it was like to make an image without listening.  Without blogs or Etsy or thousands of photography websites at my fingertips with eternal piles of imagery -- sun kissed children, lilac-ed brides. Paled skin.  Eyes all-a-perfectly shining.  A bevy of crisp, noiseless, digital sheen.  So many places to fall short.

I found these old photos and realized 10 years ago the only thing I listened to was my eye behind the camera.  And I didn’t even know I was listening, I just shot.  The film gave the magic of delay -- no looking or judging right away.   And when the film was developed, that was it.  No revising, never deleting.  It was what it was.  You would then share the photos in hand with family or friends, who stuck them in frames or pinned them to bulletin boards or the fridge.  So tactile.  Edges curled, they almost smelled like a book.  Glossy, light swelled, paper lined, words like “Kodak” or “Endurance” swimming in light blue script, corner to corner across the back.  These photos make me miss the way I could hold the image.  Tuck it into a pocket or bag.  Then find it months later like an old tissue or receipt.  Immediately brought back to the moment that it captured.

I just bought a new digital camera.  But I still miss film.

Deep

How quickly it passed: that one moment deep in February when crimson toes and running bottomless on the beach was just right.  When eyelids barely fluttered before bed, after sun and celadon water hit our winter bodies like a sack of sand.  We dreamt of screeching pelicans, twisting coral and dolphins chasing us, lean in the water.  White light everywhere.  Today eight days in Florida feels far, faraway as I watch the kids stuff wool socks into boots and swipe at breath billowing from pink mouths like frozen, thick-winged butterflies.

Veil

There are times in life you can prepare for the road ahead, and times when you wake up standing waist high in a pool of water.  Shapeless and thick, grief coats our brain and body with a black film impossible to cleanse.  It lingers.  And drowns.  Then suddenly disappears.  Only to strike again when you are boiling water for tea or jotting down notes for the grocery store.

There are some flashes of grief that will never go away.  Permanently etched – a dear friend in college who lost her grandmother, body bent over suitcase, tears quietly carving lines in skin.  My grandfather, wheelchair bound, gray suit and pale eyes, the front row of his wife’s funeral.  The stillness of my grandmother’s kitchen after she passed away.

The only thing I have pinpointed about grief is that children, mostly, are immune.  They feel loss, and their eyes can mirror sorrow, but they keep onward.  Between scoops of mac-n-cheese, "Mommy, why did Great Granpa have to go to heaven?" Again while brushing her teeth.  Yet again while stooping to pick dry cereal off the floor.  She plays it on repeat, revealing her song sparingly… while searching for a book under her bed, or drawing a kitten with a heart-shaped mouth.  But her world never really changes, bouts of grief scattering quickly like sparrows in the sky.

We all loose souls, it's part of living.  Last week, we lost my grandfather.  Sometimes there aren’t words to express the love or memories, just earthly aggravation with the death that consumes.  Emotionally, spiritually, I bow to death’s heavenly promise, but I cannot help be frustrated by its thinness.  Translucence.  Like a summer screen veiling one world from the next.  Today I am covered in mesh marks from pressing endlessly.   Missing.  And wanting to see in.