Category Archives: Thoughts

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]

Rest Easy (41)

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messy kitchen counter and small altar

Yesterday was midwinter’s day. It’s a day in our year that holds magic. I remembered in the early morning hours, and then I forgot again until I was writing on the bus in Desert Hot Springs. The day was almost over, the clouds tinged pink, our longest night of the year about to begin. The fist time I remembered, I woke up in the dark and realized I had no one to tell. It was something I did, waking up sometime after midnight, the official beginning of a holiday or one of our birthdays, greeting the cats, maybe kissing them on the head before I rolled over and went back to sleep for the real dawning of the day. “Happy winter solstice, you guys,” I whispered to the dark. “I love you both so much.” And then a moment later, “So much.” When I woke up again I’d forgotten. But I did spend the day at the hot springs, feeling like I was in heaven, so maybe I soaked up some of that magic, felt that thinning of the veil between the worlds. I didn’t make an altar. But maybe that has more to do with not spending time in the courtyard. I realized yesterday evening I haven’t sat out there since Sable died. It will be something to take back with the ending of the year, I think, or the beginning of the new one. Annie called me from the vet in the afternoon to tell me Sable’s ashes were ready. I thought I’d leave them until I returned, but I decided to go pick them up last night. When I pictured leaving for Christmas, I knew I’d feel better if both sets of ashes were together at home. I know it doesn’t matter to them. But the thought of walking out the door knowing their two little wooden boxes will be sitting beside each other on the tiny kitchen altar makes something rest easier inside me, a more peaceful turning of our world.

Goodbye (Again) (39)

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Coming home tonight in the new dark takes me by surprise. I start crying as soon as I unlock the door. No one is here. It hits hard. It strikes like physical pain, has me bending partway over in the doorway. I am so foggy I left this afternoon without my wallet, only the dollar for bus fare I had in my pocket this morning when I decided to walk home from the vet, the carrier light in my hand. Sable alive and purring, tangible moments in the little room. After, I carried his small limp form to the back, laid him down on the table, tucked his ratty catnip mouse near his chin. Way too many layers to touch on much of it now, eyes drooping from our near sleepless night together. Harder, though, than any of the others, I think. There was so much life in him still, my vigorous little boy cat, my big love. Later I will try to do you justice. Tonight, when I settle in without you, I will see what comes. I have been pulled away by work, by people, much of the day. I am looking forward to returning to you tonight while you are still fresh in me. I know how quickly you can fade. When I lie here in the dark I will hold to me sweet memory, the small weight of your tiny form pressed against me in the night, the way you purred almost until the end. My brave little one, I am so proud of you. My dear Boo, sweet dreams.

Homework (35)

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We are asked to choose one thing in our day and commit to doing it mindfully. I pick drinking my tea. I have begun to drink dong quai and wild yam with honey and coconut oil. Today I stand beside the sink preparing it. I forget the strainer and pour all the loose pieces of the roots into the waiting cup with the honey and oil. I have to laugh. It’s a good thing I chose drinking the tea and not making it, I think. I stir up the mess and strain it into a fresh cup, then carry it out to the courtyard. It takes up so many senses, so at first it seems easy to stay present, to savor it. The dong quai and the wild yam are bitter roots, the honey and coconut oil both sweet—blended the flavor is a weird and lovely combination of the two tastes. My body seems to crave it. I lean over the cup to inhale the earthy fragrance, the warm ceramic bowl of it cradled in my palms. My mind wanders more than once. I bring it back, sip my tea. I hear the goldfinch chattering. The sun sits just above the mountain ridge, the last sunlight in the late afternoon. I think next week I will choose a different thing, so I can just come and go while I drink my tea, let my mind wander where it will, untethered.

My “Real” Writing (26)

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There is a sweetness in touching my “real” writing. I wonder if it is that that truly draws me to it—that deep, quiet sweetness rather than the eager, scary thrill of reading it out loud or sending it out into the world. Maybe it is different for all writers, but there is a place we all go to, at least now and then, where we do our best work. Natalie Goldberg calls it “dropping down to first thoughts,” Clive Matson, “letting the crazy child write.” I’ve always thought of it as “entering in.” When writers describe it, there is an element of the physical, of being present, anchored in our bodies, grounded. It depends, too, on what I am writing. I may be deep in it, but if it’s something hard, the sweetness isn’t apparent. Still, I think the coming out of it may be the same, even when the writing is difficult, like pushing through anger, through pain, through loss, when it feels like pulling teeth, or breaking them with my bare hands. Even then, in the surfacing there is a sweetness, a tender regard for myself, and a sense of having done good work. Even with tears still wet on my face, when I emerge from my true writing I am never mean to myself. I am only kind.

Breathing Me (25)

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My body is tired but tense—poised to spring into action, tight from endless, focused work, staying tuned at pitch even though I have walked away now for an hour. I made watermelon juice, ate walnuts, read one of the last chapters of Thunder and Lightning. Earlier today I stopped long enough to peek at the newspaper, do my qi gong. After my next stretch of work I’ll do my yoga, roast eggplant and fennel for dinner. I am in the middle of the busiest week of my year. Monday I did 180 login help requests. My life outside, away from this frenzied beast, is broken into small chunks. What should I do with my hour? I make good effort to stay present, but the work itself blurs the brain, makes me fuzzy. Still, the miracle is I remember to breathe. I always knew it would make a difference, though I never pulled it off before. But this week I sit up straight in my bar stool in the courtyard. My feet are propped on a footstool, my laptop across my thighs. And while I enter data, do searches, reset passwords, troubleshoot, I keep taking these long, slow, deep, full breaths, as if I was always someone who did that, without even trying, as though my breath is breathing me.

Away and Back Again (23)

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On and off all day today I feel like I want to cry. Each time, the small rush of feeling wells up, pushes behind my eyes and stops. No tears. And no real reason, either, for wanting to cry. Unless it is because I am being mean to myself, some subtle, silent conversation going on inside me. I have tried so hard this week to stay grounded in the wake of hectic work. By Tuesday I had already failed. Even Sable’s endless moanings at me weren’t enough to pierce my intense distraction, my other-where-ness. (He is such a good barometer for me. How did I miss that?) Today I lose most of the morning and part of the afternoon. At 2:22 I get to a stopping point with work, and inspired by the numbers I vow to not return to it until 4:44. It is my newest “plan,” to try to fully step away long enough to recover myself. I practice my yoga in the courtyard. After, lying in chavasana, I do cry for a moment, knowing I am being unkind. Real change takes time. I need to be patient, find my way in this. But I don’t want to sacrifice being present with my life for my work. And there are other things. I want to recognize and trust my intuition. I want to know when my tree needs water. I want more red blood cells, a happy thyroid. Lying on my yoga mat beneath the tree, I tell myself I am making good effort. I am growing and healing. But I want it all now, even though I know it all takes time. When I stand up again, I am okay. I am back. Now it’s 3:22. I still have an hour and 22 minutes that are my own. I make watermelon juice and drink it on the patio. I eat a handful of roasted walnuts, read another chapter of Natalie Goldberg’s book. (I am back to Thunder and Lightening.) When she feels “broken or splintered,” she tells us, she returns again and again to Silko’s Ceremony. “I let the ritual of the book,” she says, “make me feel whole again. I’m never ashamed to read a book twice or as many times as I want. We never expect to drink a glass of water just once in our lives. A book can be that essential, too.” It is this last sentence that makes me cry again. I have books like this, books that feed me, mend me, make me whole. But I think I cry because it is such a gift to have this, to know how essential a book can be. Like water. Like air. And I think I cry because of how it speaks to me, the intimacy, the sense of being seen, and a secret longing to be part of offering that, too. Now I am all the way back. I write the first draft of this week’s blog post. I drink more watermelon juice and sit in the courtyard breathing.