Category Archives: Daily life

Lean In (5)

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I have an ailing cat. She keeps losing weight but on most days will still climb the fence to go exploring. My godmother has a beloved older dog who is undergoing one thing after another. She hurts her wrist and her shoulder grinding up Annie’s pills. She’s been through this before. My friend Audrey has a friend who may be heading into the last stretch of a long debilitating illness. She isn’t eating enough, so Audrey brings her to her home and cooks her an omelette. She thinks she’ll only eat a few bites, but her friend polishes off the whole thing. Another friend falls apart when one of her sisters calls to let her know their mother has broken her hip. It stirs everything up, sinister foreshadowing, the beginning of the end. I think the unknown is the hardest part. She feels the death of her parents looming, then makes the jump to the ailments and death of all her friends. “It all looks pretty bleak,” she says. Wait, I think later. Come back. We may have decades of healthy lives ahead of us. I buy organic liver cat food, and my Sofia licks the bowl clean. The next day she won’t touch it. I worry when she leaves the courtyard and doesn’t reappear for six hours. When she comes back in the late afternoon, I fall in a heap and cry, the sun spilling across me on the kitchen floor. We all know this, are on one side of the equation or the other. We’ve been through this before. Our hearts sink and soar. Our courage, our hope, ebb and flow. Life becomes moments. Savor the taste of the cheese omelette in our mouths. Thrill at the sight of the red glass bowl on the floor licked clean. Rejoice in watching your too-thin friend enjoying the breakfast you made her. Lick the last piece of liver off your paw. Bury again and again the part of you who wilts inside at the way the ribs show through the woman’s skin, the cat’s gray fur. Breathe. Lean into laughter when you can. Kiss them on the forehead every chance you get.

Not Off Kilter (4)

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One year ago today was a Monday, the first true day I counted for living in our new old trailer home. We moved on Saturday, and Sunday I spent hours at Avenida Ortega, cleaning, digging up palm starts, making piles, the last odds and ends of our life there. I remember sitting outside in the courtyard on Monday morning, surrounded by most of my belongings. The palo verde was the only life here then besides me and the cats. I caught movement to my right. A verdin with his wash of yellow landed in the tree. I remember thinking it was a good omen. I felt off kilter. Our first night, I walked out to the street to smoke a cigarette. I was determined not to bring that here, not to begin that way in our new home. When I came back, I’d locked myself out. I tried to break in but couldn’t. I hunted around the piles of things, managed to find the phone book, called a locksmith. Then I sat in the moonlight on one of the bar stools and waited. The courtyard was filled with eery mountains of things, ghostlike in the half light. I wasn’t afraid. I dozed off, jerked awake again. The cats must have thought I was crazy. Why didn’t I come to bed? Today instead of phantom towers, the courtyard has three trees in big pots, two bougainvillea and a honeysuckle in the earth. Today, I have a house key hidden. Today, I do yoga underneath the stars. I lie on the mat and look up at the outlines of blossoms on the palo verde, silhouettes against the dark sky. I’m not off kilter anymore. But the cats still think I’m crazy.

The Layers of You (3)

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Today I can feel myself getting better. I hope I can sleep tonight. I don’t think I’ve had the stomach flu since I was a child. I have a hard time believing it now, even after three nights of little sleep. And being who I am, I can’t help but wonder. Why did I get sick? How did I catch it? I think of the blackberries I bought at the farmer’s market. They looked dark and succulent. I was disappointed when I pulled them out of the narrow cardboard flat where they nestled with the two baskets of strawberries. What a gyp, I thought, seeing how shallow their container was, a third of the depth of the box, if that. I ate one unwashed. It was sour. They were all sour. But did I allow in that snatch of thought, that maybe they were unclean? Is that why I got sick, because I didn’t banish the thought? Is that how I got sick, from someone with this crummy flu packing blackberries? Or was I vulnerable because of my intense day of writing last week with Laurie, over six hours of writing and reading our work, and the stunning voicemail waiting for me when I got home that evening? Or even better, did I get sick to somehow mark my transition to the next thing? My spring break felt like a passage in itself, this accidental holiday filled with big days. Semana Santa. Passover. The lunar eclipse. April 18th. Then our big writing day embedded in the heart of it. Was having the flu a way to mark the changes, the ending of my big week, to begin again anew? A cleansing, both the figurative and the literal, the universe’s odd sense of humor? Because there is something unmistakable about recovering from even so brief an illness. A sense of returning to yourself, the adding on of layers that were stripped away, until you feel like yourself again but not quite the same, as though the layers were placed back at different angles, or as if they stretched or shrank in the peeling off process. Today I wriggle in my new skin. I hope tomorrow I wake up fully me.

Summer Day, Summer Night (1)

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I can hear the crickets through the open windows. Sofia is snoozing in the bathroom sink. (I almost yelped the first time I walked in and saw her there, so unexpected, like finding a tiger in the bathtub.) Sable is asleep at the foot of the bed. My eyes are heavy, but I want to post this tonight. April 8th, a summer night for anywhere normal. I’m not used to the heat yet, so today’s 96 degrees or so felt hot, but the night is gentle, soothing warmth. Long luxurious day but going since early morning. Qi gong class, then celebrating my birthday with Mami and Auntie Gardi, then easy weekly grading and finishing my four daily things. The three of us walked to lunch, my yummy yellow lentil dal. Opened presents under the umbrella here in our courtyard, all bright colors, paper and fabrics, yellow tulips, orange star flowers in the red and orange metal pot. I made iced coffee, and they oohed and ahhhed the garden, enjoyed “my” birds. I think it was a grosbeak who came to the small tray feeder, then hopped into the palo verde before he flew away. I read they were passing through. Sofia played with the ties of Auntie Gardi’s blouse, cheered us all to see it. Mami got teary when they left. I remember crying every time I drove away from her house. I’d forgotten. Now she drives me to the train station. Their visit stretched the hours, no rushing, like summer days as a kid. Now I listen to the crickets in the rich dark, a sleepy, lucky 56-year-old who’s completed the first of her 56 posts.

Egret Tryptich Finale (55)

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I am riding across the bridge on Sunrise in the afternoon weeks later. I glance down toward the golf course and see a handful of egrets wading in the shallow water. It takes me by surprise. I’ve only seen my lone egret all this time. I try to find him in the cluster of birds, but no one looks quite like him. They all seem smaller, less regal. I am flabbergasted in some odd way. Where did they all come from? Does he know they’re here? Could these guys become his friends, his family? Later I see my neighbors on the creek path. They ask me if I’ve seen the egret. Yes, I tell them. And I tell them about the ones I saw by the overpass. They seem as surprised as I am. I think about the photographer, about the man in the red hat. I wonder how many more we are, imagine scores of us each having a relationship with this one exquisite bird. What did our egret think of all our attention? And then for a moment I wonder if he is more than an egret.

The First of March, Afternoon (54)

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On the way home from the farmer’s market, I take a detour on my bike to see how much water is in the creek. I see two men, one standing very still with a big brown dog sitting at his feet, the other wielding a camera with a large telephoto lens. I slow way down as I ride past them, not wanting to disturb his shot. Then I see the egret standing in the middle of the creek. I keep going, afraid if I stop he might decide to leave the camera’s eye. I turn around at the bridge and stop to see the egret on the way back. The photographer and his companions are gone, but there are two men watching the egret from the path on the opposite side of the creek. One is wearing a red hat. I think I get almost as much pleasure looking at them as I do the egret. It makes me feel so good to know they treasure him, too. We all stand watching for a long time. The men move off, and the egret leaves, too. I watch him fly south, weaving his way between the fan palms. I turn my head for a moment when a bicyclist comes by, and when I look back the egret has disappeared. I wonder if he’s my morning egret. The day feels like it’s come full circle.

The First of March, Morning (53)

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snow on mountain

The first thing I see this morning when I raise my head from the pillow is the new snow on our mountain. The sun is shining and the mountain lies beneath the shadow of a big cloud, so the snow stands out even more against the darkness of the shadowed earth and rock. I revel in the glory of it, our impressive mountains capped in white, like holiday gear, and I watch a lone egret flying west, sunlight on his large white wings, stark against the shadowed mountain. Is this “my” egret from the golf course? I put my head back down again. I’m glad for these two white wonders. What a sweet way to begin my weekend.