and at night i listen to the sound of space from which everything that has been removed: Ever's tiny little voice, which we all agree is THE cutest baby voice we've ever heard, Lola's singing, talking to Ever, fussing at Ever, laughing, the dogs barking annoyingly at a leaf in the wind or a scrape against the door, the phone ringing with Ian or Dakota on the line, I listen
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and because I am artistic/neurotic/hopeless I am filled with a terrible panic that rises like bile in my throat and clutches at my heart from the uterus with one growing fruit hanging dumbly, more like a useless bell, and I am in an instant reminded of how heartbreakingly precious and beautiful my children are to me and how much more important life is than a cynical remark tossed over our shoulder, a clever wit to fence with, a dismissal of truth as easily as we push post, reply, like. Yes I must demand more from myself than I am because I started out so deeply flawed and broken, and my children, while they never had a mother who was a grown up in the sense of the word that most mean, they have gotten and deserve a mother who pushed herself to recreate, to heal, to mend. It is the best I can offer and I intend to keep offering the best I have, which is more about the worth and meaning of the work than it is about the result. That is my offering. A staggering awestruck love and a tireless devotion to working through life. Some days this is beautiful, other days this is terribly sad, as Patty Griffith says ' sometimes i feel like / i never been nothin but tired / and i'll be walking / till the day i expire '. One of my favorite songs, a testament.
i let the silence roll through me and over me as if i were laying silent and drowned like Ophelia in the reeds, the water pushing open my eyelids as if i were still here. see this world? is is everything you have. see this love? is it everything.
at times i can hardly bear the vast space between the mother i want to give my children and the mother i am. this is not a cultural demarcation but for me, a natural result of the gulf between the enormity of my love for them and my power as a woman to triumph over my faults and express that love. some days this is beautiful, some days this is terribly sad. the real meat of it is: whatever i or you think it is, it is what i have, and that is that. if i turn it too much in my hands it dissolves and i am confused if i am enough. if i see it, name it, write it, i acknowledge it's existence, which is the greatest offering of respect one can give- a proper greeting. then, there is no confusion 'if i am enough': i am this, no more and no less, and can only move forward if i start here.
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