Category Archives: Life

Gray Day Gratitude (43)

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Thursday morning there is the barest touch of chill to the air. I change my T-shirt for the long-sleeved pink top Mami bought me, the one with the psychedelic swirl of words on the front that she and Auntie Gardi have, too. Mine has big holes at the wrists, and I know I will have to take it off again in less than an hour. But I slide my arms into it, loving its soft suppleness, the pleasure of the fabric covering me against the momentary cold. I am guessing this may be the last time I get to wear it. It is an odd thing, this living in the desert, this craving for cold when the rest of our hemisphere is yearning after warmth. But I am not ready for this to be the last time yet, the last time I pull on a long-sleeved top, the beginning of half a year or more of heat. I count on my fingers, eight months of it if this is truly the last cool morning. (Banish the thought.) I want to stave off summer as long as I can. I relish the cool air through the open sliding glass door. There are big dark polka dots on the pavement, evidence of an attempt to rain before I woke. I sit propped up in bed to write, cozy now in my soft pink shirt. I can smell that first rain smell, moist dirt and concrete. Black clouds hug the San Jacintos, and I hear mockingbirds in the distance, a scattered quartet. I breathe in the new rain smell and smile at our good fortune. Maybe today will be a rare gray day.

As the World Turns (41)

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yellow palo verde blossoms and buds

The mockingbirds seem to be celebrating the equinox today, marking this turning of the world. I have heard them singing day and night, more of them than I can ever remember. So, I think they must be heralding in this changing time. Yesterday I walked beside the creek bed with Audrey and Bear. I left them near the bridge and walked back along the path in the late dusk. The big frog choir starting up held all my attention, unconscious of my head cocked toward them as I walked. And I could hear a large gathering of birds beginning to roost in big bushy trees on the other side of the wash, their high-pitched calls coming across to me in waves as they settled in for the night. But when I left the path, it was the mockingbird songs that followed me home through the neighborhoods. They sang from the fan palm to the east, the telephone pole behind me. And when I was almost home a mockingbird was singing across the street in the tree whose name I do not know but whose smell takes me back to childhood. I felt the warm silky air against my calves, my face. This would be summer weather, I thought, almost anywhere else in the world. But here we have a chorus line of deep-voiced frogs and spiky ocotillos blooming red and the bursting of yellow Palo Verde blossoms everywhere you look. We have warm night air and mockingbirds singing their hearts out in the almost dark. Here we are in the throes of late, late spring. Happy vernal equinox. Happy solar new year, everyone.

She Walks Away (40)

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In a dream a woman is walking down the street, heading south. We are in a foreign city. The homes and stores share a common wall along a narrow sidewalk where I stand watching her go. Mexico, maybe, or Italy. Greece. I begin to yell. “You—” I want to scream obscenities at her back. I stop myself. “You are—” I stop again. “Unkind,” I say at last, the word crisp inside my mouth, the taste of charred paper. Then I shout, “I love you.” She stops. She doesn’t turn around but looks over her shoulder. She scowls, annoyed. Conflicted, maybe. Impatient.

“Thank you,” she says. And then she walks away.

Adrienne (39)

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In more recent months, I stumbled upon a healer who practices the laying on of stones combined with her own version of energy. She names it quantum healing. It was the same experience I had with Lisa, the angel intuitive. I remember standing in the back room of the store, the art gallery where the healers often work, getting a feel for the three women working there that late September day. They were each working on someone, and again it was Adrienne’s energy that drew me. I chose her. And I was never sorry. It is a vulnerable act, an act of faith, to put yourself on the table in another’s hands. But I trusted her. She helped to bring me back from the last terrible summer months. She told me I had a chance to heal now at a deeper level, and being me, I felt like she was saying I should be doing something I wasn’t. She was patient with me, with my weird defensiveness. “Well, if you’re driving, and you get to an intersection in the road, it’s only then that you can turn left or right,” she said. “You can’t do it before you get there.” I believe it was my work with her that helped me find that full moon healing in December, the shedding of that old, heavy cloak. I went back to see her later that month, eager to hear what kind of progress she might see in me after having had that experience. But she was gone. And I know I have to trust the universe in this. I have to believe those three visits are what I was meant to have with her, and now they’re over. But I can’t help but wonder why. Could I not have kept Adrienne and Lisa a bit longer in my life, companions on this journey? Is it selfish of me to wish I could be buoyed longer than these brief bits of time? I can’t help but ask, is it something in me that makes this happen, that makes them go away? And the thought that comes is this. Maybe it is only to prevent me from becoming too dependent on them. Maybe it is the universe telling me to trust myself.

Lisa (38)

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A couple of years ago I happened upon a woman doing readings at our local “new age” store. I looked around the room, and she was the one who drew me. She was an angel intuitive. I’m not sure I’d ever heard that expression before. But what she had to tell me was simple and direct. I don’t remember most of it now. I know she talked about my writing, my book. But there was no moment when I felt as though she was just telling me things she said to everyone. It all felt personal and accurate, a validation of things I felt or knew already, as the best readings tend to be for me. When the information resonates inside me, that’s when it carries weight. I was delighted to have “found” her, to know I now had someone I could go to like this. And she even taught a class about angels. I was all ready to attend. But I called the next week, and she was gone. Her husband had died, and she never came back. I still think about her, hope she was able to be as kind to herself during that hard time as she was to me the day we met. I hope her angels and her human companions saw her through it, and she has come out on the other side. And if I am honest, I have not given up hope that one day she’ll come back, and I can sit across from her again, feel her deep sweetness, hear the news she has to bring over for me from that other realm. But all selfishness aside, may she be well loved, happy, thriving. Vayas con diosa, Lisa. Que te vayas bien.

Surprised (37)

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I’ve never lived before in a place where there are so many citrus trees. Here there are grapefruit, oranges, lemons, tangerines, tangelos. One grower at the farmer’s market even has a cross between a Mandarin orange and a kumquat, the size of a slender plum tomato, sweet skin and tart fruit. People pile up mounds of grapefruit on their lawns for passers by. They send home friends with bags of lemons. I am blessed with a kind man from my old neighborhood who still brings me grapefruit and Meyer lemons even though I’ve moved away. The trees are everywhere, but unless they are bulging with unpicked fruit I don’t tend to notice them. I do wonder who started the tradition. I notice people are quick to complain about all the golf courses but never mention this hidden forest of citrus trees we seem determined to grow here in the desert. But in February I can’t imagine being without them. In February, their fragrance finds you everywhere. It catches you in odd places, not a citrus in sight, the ambrosia wafting on some secret current of air. And every year I am surprised, again and again, breathing deep, as though the scent alone might sustain me. I look around. Is it that little neglected lemon tree beside the empty home? I’m never sure I really want to find the source. There is an added delight in the mystery, I think, knowing the sweetness has traveled unseen and who knows how far across the neighborhood to find you.

Eating the Cherimoya (36)

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I pick up the cherimoya from the counter and press it to my nose. I don’t smell anything, but it’s soft, ready to eat. I slice its reptile hide across the middle. It has a star pattern like kiwi, like Fuyu persimmons. I stand beside the kitchen sink and spoon the white fruit into my mouth. It is good, but I am not transported. The flesh is filled with seeds, big dark brown lumps I remove from my mouth, pile up on the cutting board. They are shiny and smooth, beautiful. They make a delicious sound when they knock against each other. I am more interested in playing with the seeds than in eating the fruit (saved, I think, from future extravagance). I move the pile of seeds to a small clear bowl and cover them with water. They make music against the glass. It is after midnight. I’ve just finished grading for the night, and I’m too tired to clean them now. I leave them soaking and wonder what I might do with them. I imagine them marked with color, coated with polymer to keep them shiny and wet. Maybe I’ll use them to count my laps at the pool. Or maybe I could make a set of tiny runes. I am sleepy but satisfied as I make my way to bed. My grading is done. I have a belly full of cherimoya. I fall asleep picturing the small dark seeds painted with symbols, bright orange lines against their rich brown shells.