Category Archives: Memory

I Make People Feel Bad (54)

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I make people feel bad. I’m mean to people I love. Sometimes I do it because I want them to take better care of themselves. Or because I want them to be present. Or because I want them to do the right thing. (Usually, if they aren’t acting out of integrity, they already feel guilty about it, and then I make them feel worse.) I don’t do it on purpose. I don’t want to hurt them. I get caught up in it, my pushing, my icky tone. I go on automatic pilot. I’ve done it since I was an adolescent, maybe even longer. I think over time, especially in this last year or two, I have begun to do it less often. But I don’t even know if that matters. One small moment is terrible for both of us. I remember being in the car with my best friend when I was sixteen. My hands were on the wheel, and I was screaming at her. Then I started crying. Even then I understood making her feel bad made me feel worse about myself, added heft and weight to my mountains of self-loathing. But I couldn’t stop. Just before my cats died I stopped yelling at them, found a way to be neutral, even tender. Now I have small moments when I manage to modulate the ugly tone in my voice, to not react badly to my mother on the phone. Not always, but sometimes I can stop myself. I want to believe one day I won’t hurt the people I love. And maybe saying all this is part of that, saying this and not hating myself while I do.

The Bird on the Wall (51)

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I lay out my green yoga mat on the far side of my mother’s pool. It seems like the best spot. The concrete is level, the valley stretched out before me to the west. The sun is low in the sky, and I angle my mat so when I’m standing I’ll be facing the orange ball while it sinks behind the mountains. (True sun salutes, I think.) I begin lying down, stretching my spine, my hips. Yesterday was the first day I did my yoga in a long, long time. I was surprised my arms were able to hold my weight when I lowered myself to the mat from plank position. I was wobbly when I came back up to standing, but it didn’t matter. I was just so glad to be doing it again. Today when I get to the sun salutations, my arms are sore from yesterday and won’t hold my weight in that slow lowering to the mat. I have to touch my knees down, and still my arms hurt with the weight of me. When I am back on the mat, dropping my knees from side to side, I see a little bird on the wall near me. I don’t have my glasses on, can’t be sure what kind he is. He looks like he might be a flycatcher, but he stays put on the wall. I decide he may be a young mockingbird, even though he is silent. I slow my movements, not wanting to startle him. He tilts his head, seems to be studying me, strange being on the ground. He stays on the wall for the rest of my yoga, and I am touched and honored by his company. The moon is out, too, bright with daylight. I am fragile today, so the wonder of these two companions swells my heart. When I sit up after chavasana, the bird is gone. But I can still touch his soft, quiet peace. Thank you, little one.

Earthquake (43)

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new snow on the mountains with shadows and clouds

I wake up this morning to an earthquake. It is a long, gentle trembling of our world, the first one in my trailer home. It feels familiar, like I dreamed it or slept through another unknowing during the night. I wait in bed, poised to spring up, grab my clothes and sprint for the door if it becomes violent. After, I sit up to see fresh snow on the mountain, wisps of clouds, all tinted pink by the rising sun. My heart thuds, my own aftershock, but it calms soon, looking out the window. Later, the birds come and the sunlight touches the courtyard, slants through the clerestory windows, gift of the winter sun. I hear the heater, smell my walnuts toasting in the oven, appreciate warmth, electricity, running water, all still here after the earth shakes. I remember the quick leap of terror and am soothed again by the memory of that quiet pink mountain, the exquisite clear air and the truth that all is well.

Christmas Card Letter 2015 (42)

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red Christmas ornament in snow

Yesterday, the tenth day after my cat Sable died, I woke up happy for the first time in a long while. Today I wake up in the almost dark, Venus still vibrant in the southern sky and the solar Christmas lights glowing on the guayaba tree outside my window. It’s the first morning I don’t cry. The shock has lessened, though in moments I still reel. Sofia died in September. It’s hard to believe it’s only me here now, our little family of three gone. I glimpse things I’ll be able to do now without them, visits to friends, to Wilbur, to Mami, even just here in town, gone long hours, nothing tugging me home. Small snatches of excitement spark in me, mixed with a kind of guilt it’s easy to brush aside. I know I would gladly have stayed put to care for them forever. I miss those gentle tethers. Now it’s just me and the birds and the field mouse I met the other day in the shed. The house finch are loud and cheerful through the open kitchen window as I write. It makes a difference. My best truth today is knowing how much I cherished them, knowing I didn’t take them for granted. Sitting under the umbrella in the courtyard, the two of them napping on their pillows nearby, their furry forms relaxed in boneless cat abandon, and me knowing life didn’t get better than this. The sound of Sable clomping down the hallway, a galloping horse, the only way to run on this laminate flooring, and my heart lifting for his mad cat glee. And waking on a cold night warm beneath the down blankets, their small weights pressed against me making me feel like the luckiest woman in the world. I feel it still. And I know sweet things lie ahead. I cradle my big loss low in my arms, soft against my belly, grateful and alive. May the year ahead lie easy and dear to each of us.

[written on December 19th]

If We Are Lucky (40)

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You don’t have to be good. You don’t have to walk on your knees for 100 miles through the desert, repenting. You only have to let the soft animal of your body love what it loves. You only have to gentle enough to understand: even you are only human. You make mistakes. You hurt the ones you love. You let people down. You carry these things with you in a life. You were unkind to your father that late afternoon on his big stone porch in Echo Park the last time you saw him. You yelled at Sofia bare months before she died when she began peeing on the floor instead of using the cat box. You thought Sable had ear mites, that he missed Sofia, that he was losing weight because of his irritable bowel disease. You didn’t think kidney failure until that Saturday morning when he was dangerously dehydrated and you rushed him to the vet. Now he’s dead, and you think you should have known. You should have saved him, could have had him here beside you for another handful of years like you always imagined. But now he’s dead. We carry these things with us in a life. We live with them, wrestle with them, these deep regrets. If we are lucky we make peace with them, let them lay down on the moist earth inside us, our rich decay. If we are lucky, good things grow.

[Editor’s note: The first three sentences here are from a Mary Oliver poem titled “Wild Geese.“ This came from a writing exercise in a workshop I attended called “The Way of Story” by Catherine Ann Jones.)

Heart Forward (36)

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I’ve begun taking a yoga class again. I chose the beginning class, and still the first day I felt like a big, heavy weakling. But I didn’t make myself feel bad about it. I am only glad I’ve begun, knowing I’ll get stronger, lighter. I believe that because two decades ago I did yoga for the first time at a retreat. After three days, I felt amazing. I fully inhabited my body for the first time in my life. There was energy between my toes. I haven’t touched that exact feeling since, as though all of my being reached the edges of my skin, but I know it’s possible. I do yoga at home, but I don’t push myself the way I am pushed in a class. I seem to have become better, too, at protecting my back, my hip. I am paying more attention. And when I can’t do something, or it is really hard, I am not beating myself up. These two changes alone are immense, gratifying. Add working in the yoga studio full of clean autumn light with a teacher who emphasizes the spiritual aspects of the practice—well, it becomes almost more than I can hold. I can feel it moving against my breast bone, and I remember yesterday I learned I push my ribs out too far. I need to move my heart forward. And so I will.

Altar Peace (34)

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my altar with candles and pumpkin and marigolds

My day of the dead unfolded without effort, my altar growing little by little over the past week, my ritual organic and unplanned. I bought a big bunch of orange marigolds at the farmers market, and yesterday I plucked them from their stems, added them to the altar. Now it is a living, breathing thing beside me, candles at the heart of it. I wish I could let you see it the way I see it. The changing light adds a kind of sharpness, a clarity. It makes the colors dazzle, the flames dance. Every time I look at it it makes my heart dance, too. I have a big grin on my face, and I feel so lucky I could burst. And the smell—that spicy, earthy scent. I won’t need food if I can just keep breathing it in. Sunday in the late dusk I watered the plants here in the courtyard, went through the long list of my dead. They’d been coming to me bit by bit, but this time I started at the beginning, worked my way through each one in order, from my dog Grunt and my Oma almost 50 years ago to my cat Sofia, my newest dead. I ended up standing in the dark beside the glowing altar talking to each one, wanting them to know they are well loved and well missed, asking for blessings on them at this time when the veil between the worlds is thin, midway through these months when the moon holds sway. Today while I write a bee comes to grace the altar, touching each blossom in turn, messenger of the gods. Feliz día de los muertos. Happy turning of the wheel.