Category Archives: Home

Morning (32)

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I am still wearing a long-sleeved shirt because I got caught up in working online and forgot to pay attention. Now I know I am too warm, even in shorts, even sitting in the shade. I can hear a goldfinch in the palo verde, his high-pitched trills exotic somehow–bird aria. “What’s Love Got to Do with It?” is playing on the construction site. Sable meows a couple of times before setting back on his pillow behind me. Sofia walks into the shed. I hear her clamber back up to her latest perch, having climbed down to pee and have a bite to eat. Now she can return to the important job of napping. My eyes are heavy, and I’d love to curl up, too, let sleep take me. Last night I was working in bed and began nodding off at the computer. This is new to me. Does it mean I’m getting old? This morning instead of working first thing I lay on my back and let myself daydream. I could hear a house finch singing in the neighbor’s tree. Such a pretty song, drifting in the open louvers. I studied the ceiling, the way the elegant boards cross it, mid-century craft, old-school care. Boo was still curled up beside me. “I love our home,” I said and stroked him. And then I didn’t let the wake of those words drown me in that long list of things that need doing. I managed to let it all wash out to sea instead and just be happy lying there beside my soft black cat in the early morning. Lucky. Grateful. Sleepy. Glad.

Who Are Your Angels? (31)

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Without thinking, take a leap. Who are your angels? Name them all. Go.

My angels? Without thinking??!!? Oma, maybe. Lassie. Sanji. Bonnie. Daddy. Even Jarv? But oh goodness–how do I do it without thinking? Angels are not supposed to be spirits of loved ones who’ve died but their own “species,” so to speak. I have a hunch it is because of angels I no longer feel alone the way I used to, though maybe growing up has a part in that, too. I imagine angels disguised as birds in my life–the beat of the raven’s wings near my head, the kestrel’s call, that silvered moment when I watched the barn owl’s silent glide in the night, lit by the lights shooting up from the ground at the house on the corner. I imagine a fat angel in a white dress perched on the wooden fence between my home and my landlord’s. She has yellow hair, like the felt angel Mami gave me years ago with the wild yellow curls who hangs on my front gate at Christmas.

[Editor’s note: This is another writing prompt from before I moved into my trailer. Things, as you can see, will be a bit of a hodgepodge while I work toward still meeting my original commitment of 55 posts while I’m 55 in spite of my huge lapse this year. ;-)

I am thinking of working with prompts for going forward, too. I think this is the last of the older ones. I thought some of you might enjoy having the prompts themselves, though I’m afraid I don’t have attributions for these last few.]

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.

Where I Live (24)

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mountains, clouds, sky

I ride along the bike path on my way home from the farmers market, the San Jacinto mountains ranged before me. “Look where I live,” I whisper. I remember driving home from Santa Rosa on Guerneville Road, fields spread out beside me, the green rolling hills ahead. “Look where I live,” I’d say. I’d wiggle my butt on the seat, both hands on the wheel, dancing a little jig inside. I can go all the way back to Oakland, to that freeway junction I loved, from 580 to 24, I think. It ran in a wide climbing arc, the glory of the East Bay spread out below me. In Hopland I would sit on our wide stone porch and watch the rock outcropping change colors with the day, and I’d feel like I was living in a vacation rental. Then walking on the beach in Todos Santos, alone amidst scoops of brown pelicans, no one else in sight. Or riding the bus to San Juan Cosolá, ranchera music pouring out the open windows, my cheeks wet with grateful tears. I have been so lucky. But there is something about the San Jacintos that stirs me. And they are such a contrast to the lush farmland and oak woodland green of Sonoma County that evoked that first deep sense of wonder over where I lived. Now it is this stark, enormous nearby presence that makes my heart beat, breathes my lungs, these craggy rock mountains so alive I wonder if I can ever choose to live without them.