Category Archives: Health

Another Summer’s Dream (29)

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I dream I am dreaming. I know when I wake up in the dream whatever is there–whatever I see first–will be what’s important. I open my eyes and the first thing I see are the stars, a whole deep sky of them, the kind you don’t see in the city. And below is a wooden roof that is my mother’s roof in the dream, and there is some sort of art sitting on it like a fancy painted nesting box made of wood. I don’t understand it, but it makes me feel good looking at it in the quiet night.

Write About Home? (27)

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Write about home. That was the writing prompt on April 17th, 2012. Ten minutes. Go.

I think home for me may be anywhere I feel safe and centered and at rest. If I can feel all of these things, I can feel at home in a motel beside of a busy highway. If I’m on edge, off kilter, then I can’t rest in myself, am itchy in my skin, can’t settle. I seem to go for long stretches now where I’m at rest with myself, and then the patio cement wobbles, the windowpanes rattle, and I am on my knees, angry at myself for falling down, for trying to stand up and not being able to. I eat too much, resist the work waiting for me. Essays go ungraded, dishes make a small city in the kitchen sink. When I was much younger, I had a rule about eating for comfort. I would assemble the food beside the television. And then I’d lie on the couch and had to feel whatever it was I was needing to feel. After a good cry, the Cheetos became my reward. I miss Cheetos. Last night I ate savory rice crackers out of the bag and then a small bowl of peanut butter and brown rice syrup and lost myself in a book about Mexico. This morning I lingered in bed and the tears came. They brought me home again.

My Boo, My Barometer (26)

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My black cat lying on the bed

My cat Sable has a habit of yelling at me whenever I’m wound too tight. On days when my stress is high, he makes me even crazier. He paces, never settles, emits loud ceaseless meows while he stares at me. “Don’t you dare,” I tell him when it threatens to send me over the edge I’m already skirting. “Not today, Boo.” I shake my head. “I can’t handle it today.” When he doesn’t give up, I often end up screaming at him. “Enough,” I yell. “Enough.” It isn’t something I’m proud of. Last Friday when he started his endless howling, I told him he was just going to have to deal with my anxiety. “I am already too tense,” I say in a hard, brittle voice. “The last thing I need today is you yelling at me.” Of course, he keeps it up. He’s a cat. He stalks from kitchen to front stoop and back again, his cat roars punctuating the winter air, poking me in the eyeballs, the back of my head. It is worse than nails on chalkboard, worse than the old scratchy LP stuck on the turntable, the endless jarring repetitive noise. I want to scream at him, but I sit down instead. “You want kisses?” I ask him. I pat the bed beside me. He leaps up, still howling away, but quiets when I pet him. I’ve always known he’s my barometer, but I finally get how he can guide me. I let everything else fall away for a few moments while I stroke him, his whole soft little self vibrating with his big purrs. Is it really that simple? I wonder. Is it really just a choice for each moment, to drop back down to calm, to stop the frenzied pace and the racing mind and just be, warm black fur beneath my fingers?

The Pressure Mounts (25)

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The Friday before last I grumped my way through my morning chores. I felt like I had to rush now that things had amped up again during the first week of the semester. I had to hurry up and get the basics out of the way so I could work on school stuff. I was cranky about not being able to take my time, whether I was pouring hot water over herbs for the cats or sweeping the patio. I hate rushing, don’t know how to do it without getting tense. I could feel myself resisting having to hurry. “So much for sneaking up on high gear and keeping my peace,” I muttered while I washed the dishes with quick strokes. Three nights ago I had bad dreams. In one I came home and found the door standing open, my dog missing. I went out in the rain to find her, stood in the dark and saw someone else’s pet lying dead on the wet street. I remember waking in the night, lying there worrying about whether or not the toilet might fall through the floor, then trying to figure out the best way to approach some temporary online data entry and editing work I’d just begun. My fingers were making little noises as they moved back and forth against the down blanket covering my ear, inadvertent motions, the scratchy sounds of my stress.

Sitting in the Dark (20)

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light spilling out from kitchen window

This is something that needs saying. I’ve thought so again and again during the intervening months. It happened to me over and over through the long, grueling months of summer. Even though I was kind of a mess from our move. Even though my first foray into home ownership was riddled with distress. Even though in the bigger picture during that time I couldn’t have told you how glad I was we’d moved, couldn’t have said in any unequivocal way how much I loved our new home. Even though I’d crumbled in it all, I would still sit outside at night, and it would come to me in these small moments. I’d glance up at the kitchen window of our new old trailer home and see the light spilling out from it, and it spoke to me of welcome and all things good, all things inviting. “Look,” I’d say in the warm dark. “Just look at what we have.”

October 27, 2013 (19)

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Yesterday afternoon I tackled cleaning the storage shed for the first time. I pulled everything out, made piles in the courtyard of anything that couldn’t get wet–my art supplies, my photographs, my Christmas stuff–put everything else on the pavers between our tree, Serena, and the shed. I hosed off shovels and rakes, empty crates, cat carriers. I swept the shelves, the floor, then turned the hose on the inside of the shed, ceiling and all. I felt a flicker of panic for one moment while I stood there, hose in hand, water dripping on my head. All that water everywhere, all that wet, unfinished wood. Did I just ruin something? An impulse from childhood, maybe, that favorite stuffed dog I left out in the rain. It freaked me out, too, seeing all my boxes filling the courtyard. It was too evocative, I think, of all those weeks after we moved here when almost everything I owned sat outside. But today I can trust I’ll put everything away again. And in the early dusk yesterday when I’d finished hosing everything off, I felt that deep satisfaction that’s been so rare in these long months of summer, of having done a thorough cleaning, a careful, complete job. I chained my bike to Serena, just in case. I slid the window open in the shed, left the door propped wide so it could dry out. And all through the warm summer evening the smell of wet wood drifted in the open windows of our trailer, making me feel good over and over each time the scent reached me, reminding me I’d done this–this satisfying, tangible thing.

October 24, 2013 (18)

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What was different about today? It was the first in weeks, maybe, where I didn’t have school work waiting. And the day seemed to open up. I did my yoga. I did my qi gong. Not because I made myself do them. I had set no goals. But there was enough time and enough shade, so I unrolled my mats and lay down in our courtyard. Later, I moved my chair from under the umbrella so I could do my qi gong standing in the last bit of shade. And while I breathed, while I moved my arms, my legs, back and forth, again and again, through it all I heard a voice whispering in my ear. “I am here. I am here. I am here.”

[Editor’s note: Below this in my notebook it says, “It is, I think, a return to my peace. But I’m not sure how I got back here.” ;-) ]