If home is where the heart is, I’m not sure I have a home.
My legal residency is in Arizona – but it has not felt like home for decades.
My heart is with beings who live far away – but I have no home of my own there.
Maybe the fact that my physical heart has literally been “broken” is a good metaphor.
Each time I come to visit my family in Minnesota, I know there is an end date.
My residency is in the desert, not on the plains.
Each time I have to leave my brilliant. creative, compassionate daughter,
my bright, imaginative, funny remarkable grandchildren,
my big, clumsy, sweet, obnoxiously adoring granddog,
my grandgeese, grandchickens, and grandducks who greet me each morning,
and the towering evergreens and huge black walnut tree
that I see from my window when I open the curtains;
each time I have to go “home,” my emotional heart breaks again.
Just the thought robs me of air and tears thick with sadness stream down my cheeks.
Life goes on.
I have things to do in another distant place.
Living in “The Cottage;”
this perfectly marvelous and perfectly challenging semi-insulated
wooden shell of a tiny house on a farm in rural Minnesota
becomes significantly less marvelous when the winter temps drop to negative numbers
and snow drifts against the door.
So, I pack for my trip back to Arizona, and I cry as I choose what to put in my suitcase
and what to leave here in the space they have so lovingly made for me.
I cry over the tiny suitcase that holds a 4-year-old’s scraps of cardboard,
2 broken balloons on a string, an empty dropper bottle, a spiral notebook and pen,
a crumbled piece of Christmas wrapping paper, 3 books, a purple knit cap,
and other treasures scavenged from the Cottage as tools for pretending.
She dashes to see me as soon as she gets home from preschool.
Her big bright beautiful eyes behind small, pale-purple glasses peek in my window,
and her grin broadens as I motion her in for playtime before dinner.
“Hello Beast” she says.
“Welcome home, Belle” I say in a beastly voice.
The cottage instantly becomes a gothic castle until she says,
“Now let’s pretend you are Anna and I am Elsa”
and the castle is magically turned to sparkling ice.
I cry over the tiny suitcase,
and the small cardboard box she decided was the perfect crib for her plastic baby turtle.
I cry sitting in the audience watching her 14-year-old sister
playing a Who in “Seussical the Musical” because it is such a miracle that she is there,
doing what she loves; doing what I have loved since before I was her age.
I cry over my grandson’s lanky 16-year-old body draped over the couch,
his thick dark hair falling in waves over his handsome freckled face.
I cry at the thought of saying goodbye to my daughter at the airport,
and to all that I leave behind,
and to that tiny suitcase.
Over weeks and months, my feelings will numb a bit
and my emotional heart will recover a bit,
just like my physical heart has recovered a bit.
But the brokenness is never really mended.
The cracks in my emotional heart are still real,
just like the damage to my physical heart is real.
My eyes will brim with tears as the plane lifts off,
carrying me away from the love – the hugs – the laughs,
away from Elsa and Anna,
away from Belle and Beast,
away from that tiny suitcase.
I’ll be back my sweet Bella Bella.
I may be out of your sight for a while, but Mawney always comes back.
Just ask Bobo and Sissy. Mawney always comes back.
I love you all to infinity and beyond!
LAE 11-14-23
The Undissolved Bather
“Everything is a miracle. It is a miracle one does not dissolve in one's bath like a lump of sugar.” - Pablo Picasso
The Tiny Suitcase
Bella Bella Ballerina
Forever and For Always
I was supposed to be in the delivery room. It was all planned – supporting her through the process and watching the baby be born. I sat up with her in the living room most of the night, trying to help but feeling entirely powerless as I watched my daughter in pain. Moving an 8-pound baby out of your body is a lonely job, no matter how many people are nearby. I dozed for a bit, and then my daughter was saying “It’s time to go” and we were off in a rush. The wheelchair that awaited us at the hospital door whisked her along to labor and delivery, with me close on her wheels. A room filled with light and helpful friendly nurses did not hide the fact that something was not going quite right. I watched, remembering her older brother and the long painful process of labor before an emergency C-Section brought all 10 pounds, 15 ounces of him into the world. My grandson was taking his time making his entrance – and in a strangely ironic turn of events – the doctor decided that my daughter also needed a last-minute C-section. So I could not be there to greet my grandson – to see his first breath – to hear his first cry or see my daughter's joy when she saw her son for the first time. I sat dejectedly in the waiting room with his other grandparents – anxious, worried and wallowing in my disappointment. I had never actually seen a delivery firsthand, since I was sedated when my son was born and didn’t get to see him until many hours later. Complications during the surgery when my daughter was delivered by C-section gave me only a brief glimpse of my beautiful baby girl before she was carried off to the nursery. Watching this delivery of my very first grandchild was a dream come true for me; a dream that was not meant to be.
After what seemed forever, a tired but happy Daddy came out to the waiting room and invited me to be the first to meet this brand-new shiny soul named Sebastian Phoenix. The nurse lead me to the nursery, pointed out an infant warmer, and a quiet gasp escaped my lips as I looked at the huge dark blotch around the baby's eye and down the entire side of his face. Was this some kind of giant birthmark – or was there something wrong with my sweet baby boy? It only took an instant to look beyond the blotch and see the gorgeous creature that lay in that clear bassinette. The immense love I had felt for him from the moment I knew he existed in his mother’s womb washed over me. Then the nurse blurted out that our boy had been tightly wedged behind his mother’s pelvis and had to be pulled out with forceps. The big purple splotch was a bruise – he was going to be just fine!
Left alone with him, I gazed in
wonder at this miracle before me. His half Columbian heritage was evident in
his thick dark hair, but the pale skin was all his mother. I reached out and reverently touched his leg – his tummy – then his tiny perfect fingers. As I stood in
complete adoration - he wrapped his sweet brand-new precious hand around my finger and held on. A flash of joy shot through my body and as tears of happiness flowed down my face, a
forever connection was formed that still exists 15 years later. It is a memory of total happiness indelibly
etched in my mind.
There is a song from the musical "Mame," when Mame is singing to her nephew Patrick. "You're my best beau; you're handsome and brave and stong, there's nothing we two can't face... and if some day another beau comes along, determined to take your place, I hope he's resigned to fall in behind, my best beau." I have sung this song to Sebstian all of his life, and my nickname for him is Best Beau. If someday, I grow old and senile; if I can’t remember where I am or what year it is or the names of any of the people I love, I am certain I will still remember the ecstasy of my sweet Best Beau's tiny fingers wrapped around mine – holding on tight to someone who will love and accept him exactly as he is, forever and for always!
LAE 3-4-22
Thankful for the Important Stuff
I WAIT FOR THE SUNRISE
I wait for the sunrise,
feel the chill in the desert air,
know the smell of dew on creosote
and the sound of coyote’s last call.
Soon the sun will come,
the chill will go and the dew will dry.
The creatures of the day will replace the creatures of the night.
Fox, rattlesnake, prairie dog, hawk,
each with its own purpose – its own Divine holy life,
and they move forth in their world with no concern
for what they will wear,
or what others will think
or where they will be when the darkness returns.
I wait for the sunrise.
The Universe turns up the volume on the Cicadas
and the buzzing rises to a dull roar.
The glow on the horizon becomes a bright bump of color
slowy expanding into the fullness of its blazing round.
Sun floods the desert with its brilliance
while four grey-brown lizards, basking in its glow,
never worry, not even for one moment,
about who is paying for all
this Light.
I wait for the sunrise.
The desert is a harsh place but the cycle of life is strong.
The hearty survive,
without malice - without hateful intent.
Life simply continues
whatever that requires.
I wait for the sunrise
and imagine a place with no wars
No hatred
Peaceful coexistence
Living in the moment – filled with hope
Being what we were created to be, every day, all the time.
The ever-changing song of the Mockingbird tells it all:
“Hope is everywhere. Nature is at peace!”
Imagine that.
Imagine that kind of peace and hope in our human world.
I wait for the sunrise…
and the rise of peace for all creatures on earth.
LAE 2004
The Undissolved Bather Speaks
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Molly never met or even talked to Savannah Angel. She did see all the pictures I plastered on Facebook, like ...
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May 9, 2015 My big brother went away today, and the world became heavier… darker… scarier. I thought I had long ago outgrown ...