here today

 

things I tell myself

There are things I tell myself in order to keep going, keep showing up. Keep showing up for my clients, my day job, my dog, for Ben, my friends, my house, my life. These things I tell myself are just close enough to the truth that insistent warrior. Close enough to the truth to keep the truth from taking over.

Sometimes the things I tell myself do not work I can’t move quickly enough to get the walls up and then there I am frantically stacking bricks muttering will this do I wonder? And the trouble is they often land on me these half-truth, half-lie constructions when they tumble it is always inwards.

I am sitting now with bricks all around me one of the biggest piles I’ve seen that one was a doozy I put in a mighty effort and when it fell there was no mistaking it. I did not even know I was pregnant so the story of what exactly happened is an ever-shifting one with shadows and tricks of the light. Smoke and mirrors as the Georgia Boys used to say. Smoke and Mirrors.

It was not the right time I told myself. Not a good time at all I said putting mortar in between but maybe it was something else. Something less solid. That little soul looked down at me and made the right choice I said. They looked at ben & I and our busy home both of us in school at work at play all of our worries and thought oh maybe later I’ll come back when things slow down. It was not the right time that’s all I whispered not the right time and I’m glad for it.

When the first brick fell out of my hand I did not notice I had too much to do there was not a place for all that bleeding let alone for feelings about it so I nudged it back into place and carried on. The next ones cascaded in a group there was no ignoring the sound they made I did not even know I was pregnant but I knew this. Still I called it everything else though there aren’t many choices I just kept bleeding. The morning of my presentation that Frida Kahlo painting with the baby floating up above her torn wrecked body haunted me nearly kept me from getting dressed organizing my notes carrying on. Halfway through my day I stopped or my day stopped me I couldn’t see anything but Frida in her bed a baby didn’t want me I can’t keep marching forward for this I must at least sit down for a moment. At least sit down.

As a therapist a new therapist I wonder did I need the lesson to be so hard. Did I need it to hurt everywhere not just the usual places but new undiscovered ones. Did I need this time to be so bad that I would finally stop hefting bricks. Building walls. And if so what now. Is there even a way for this person I am to do it differently. Is there even a way.

There are things I tell myself and one of them is that I do not care too much about a child adding a child to our lives. I do not care I say but Friday night at the Jung lecture that painting up on the screen the baby up above Frida ripped apart in every way and the words I do not care make up a wall of lies inside of me. A wall of lies so thick nothing else can fit in there.

There are things I tell myself.

Posted by: 120pages at 07:09 | link | comments (6) |

i sing.

couple of months ago stephan aizenstadt came to town.
the workshop was on dreamtending and all the Jungians were there in their shawls and such.

he told a story of a village where the women when they are ready to become mothers they find a tree and sit under it and listen for the song of their child-to-be.

when the song comes to them they learn it and sing it or hum it while the baby is in the womb and they teach it to the father and also to the other women of the village.

at the birth, the women all gather around and sing the song of the child that was listened for by its mother under a tall tree

a few weeks ago a song came to me I was not listening for it but still it arrived and although I only had a tiny beginning of a baby in me for a week and then it was gone still the song has not stopped.

I sing to the sun in the sky I sing to the sun rising high

Posted by: 120pages at 18:09 | link | comments (3) |

stage fright

You sit next to me while we look at her
hands around my throat, tight.
I open and close my baby bird mouth
Wanting to be fed but with what I don’t know

Behind me or maybe slightly to the left the tick tock of a minute hand
tells me the weight of this might be more than I can lift just now

It started out easy
one of those light-hearted days
One of those oh my what have I been up to?
Listing out he saids and she saids
Moving from word to word as if strands of meaning did not connect them
Pretty beach rocks tumbled together in a pile, some from years ago, some from that trip we took last weekend.
In the end I can never remember which is from where and when but I love them all still.

It started out so easy
One of those light-hearted days
I thought to deliver a small problem to play with
So I mentioned it
Off-handedly brought it in for us to look over
And that’s when words began to feel more like
That last little bit of toothpaste in a tube
when you wonder why you are even squeezing
And do you really want it

You sit next to me while we look at her
Hands around my throat, tight

Posted by: 120pages at 17:52 | link | comments |

all the world's a stage

my uncle met me at the new Vegan place on Vancouver just a few blocks from my house. I admit I chose it in part because of the hot young chef doing dirty funky stuff with vegetables and by that I mean the food was fantastic not just soy masquerading as meat products but instead piles of flavors textures wow.. He came out to greet us and I said to him typical brenda style awkwardly clumsily that the eggplant tomato soup was one of the best things I'd ever put in my mouth.

he grinned wiped his hands on his apron eyebrows raised and I laughed like the time the masseuse called me a tight little number oh Sex just gets in there everywhere doesn't it.

but I'm here to talk about saturday which was the day after friday and on friday my uncle he asked if the reason I had written that letter at this time was because I had some fear that my mom might not be here much longer.

of course don't we all fear that disappearance of the womb where if we could only go back to that safe place we could. I like to keep the rooms at dark like a womb I don't know if it gives my clients a feeling of safety but I know that for me I can climb up on the couch and the rest of the world doesn't exist anymore.

so saturday was a miracle and part of me doesn't even want to bring it here into this blog as if by talking about it I might step back in time and reverse the picture of my mom listening really listening. asking me questions, thanking me, quiet, thoughtful and did I mention listening?. It was almost painful to be there in her limelight though it was less bright than usual she looked tired her skin was loose around her eyes her neck that papery thinness that I expected to see in ten more years. at the end of it we hugged looking straight into each other's eyes me angling downwards glancing at her heart that fragile beast.

all of them are though aren't they fragile

“…Last scene of all, That ends this strange eventful history, Is second childishness and mere oblivion, Sans teeth, sans eyes, sans taste, sans everything.” – W. Shakespeare

Posted by: 120pages at 11:21 | link | comments (1) |

scorpio moon

vanessa sucked in her breath at this point in the reading. that scorpio moon, she said.

the moon rules the Mother Archetype. You will experience your mother this way, or carry that energy for her. other women you attract might also have this energy. this is powerful. an intense link.

there is death and rebirth here. a periodic emotional cleansing.

3 days later mother, my mother, the carrier of scorpio energy was back in the hospital, her heart racing one hundred ninety beats per minute, skipping ahead towards death it was stopped cold by beta blockers and when I heard that I remembered psychopharm god I wish I had beta blockers right now I thought damnn scorpio moon. damn mother mine.

the vagina shaman sees unfinished business there no shit I said and we laughed but then I cried.

dear mom, I wrote, this morning. dear mom I am glad you are home again, temporarily safe.

dear mom, I wrote, dear moon, i wrote:

Mom: I am writing to you because I find it hard to speak.

And it is because I find it hard to speak that I am writing to you.

I am ready for motherhood myself but the idea of what it means to be a mother stops me.

So I am reaching out to say some things to you that you have not heard from me. And my request is only that you hear them. They might not feel right or true to you, they might not even at first make it past the wall that you will quickly build to keep them out. Words are scary, often, so I will try my best to make these words only about me and hopefully you can then at least peek out over the wall to see what I am saying.

I have felt, from childhood, that who I am is not okay. I have felt pressure to try to be someone that better fits with your ideas of personhood. I have kept quiet, mostly, kept hidden, tried to be invisible. You said to me once that I was the child you did not have to think about and it is because that was my intent growing up.

I do not want that experience for my child. So I need to be able to model something different – show my child how to take up space and not be afraid to reach out their hands and heart. With that intention, I am learning to say out loud who I am. I do that in most areas of my life now, more or less.

But I still hesitate to do it with you. I still fear disapproval and judging. Judging that might never come, but my fear runs very deep.

I have reacted to this fear by pulling back further away from you. When I visit, I try to ask many questions about your life and keep talk of mine to a minimum, keep my life separate and therefore safe from disapproval. I seem to have two choices at this point – continue on that path of distance, or be wholly present as myself when I see you.

Or perhaps both.

I could write a similar letter to dad, but this is specific to motherhood and what mothering means to me, has meant, will hopefully mean. You are my mother, I hope to be someone’s mother – and it is a complicated and amazing job to consider. My application is filled with hope and worry and even fear. The hope is that I can always be honest – honest about my mistakes, my regrets, my own ideas of what kind of child I want. The worry is that I have started on all of this too late. The fear is that I will not be able to parent with love and grace and embrace my child no matter who they are – who they become and a piece of that, of course, is that I first need to approach my own self with love, grace and acceptance.

That, for me, begins here. I forgive myself for experiencing my daughterhood as a set of rules that must be followed. Rule number one was that I should not cause any trouble – there was enough trouble already. I accept that I find it hard to share my feelings, thoughts, fears, ideas with people – even people outside my family. I decided when I was very young to hide them, and it is a hard lesson to unlearn. I understand that it has taken me nearly 38 years to say to you that I would like a different kind of relationship –– also, that I do not know really what that means other than beginning with this letter.

Thank you for reading this. I love you very much.

Posted by: 120pages at 11:20 | link | comments (2) |

bamboo & mermaid caves

my friend's father, or rather my sort of friend's father - oh, never mind - some guy once lectured some girl by telling her she should not be like bamboo, bending in the prevailing wind. that she should stand up straight & tall and sure & steady.

but bamboo is a powerful plant grows anywhere, tall, leafy, home to panda bears & if I had to name a plant after my friend the mermaid I would choose bamboo it is a survivor you see. you can stick it in a funny pot in a hospital room and tell it that the only way to make it is to have an awful surgery with a wire up the arm and then the removal of a rib and the bamboo will say No Thank you Very Much but no. and then it will turn around and quietly get back to the work of growing up taller than you ever expected.

all this is to say, having gotten lost in my metaphor and searching, probably through the thick trunks of a bamboo jungle, for a way out - all this is to say that the mermaid made it back last night. she is home in her mer-cave.

last night ben & I watched casablanca and there is the line, that famous line, ...the problems of three little people don't amount to a hill of beans in this crazy world. and there is truth to that line perhaps not the truth that was intended but my truth for the line is that yes the world is crazy but that the three little people are connected to every other person so if you separate them out they are tiny but put everyone together and there you have a mountain of beans. oh, it is very early in the morning and I am quite tired, perhaps not making sense. anyhow, here's looking at you kid...

Posted by: 120pages at 05:43 | link | comments (4) |

sing for me, please.

I never write dear blog unless there is something terrible.

I never write when life is sunny. When Ben & I have finished painting our house all on our own, ben on a twenty five foot ladder with two rods duct-taped together, a paintbrush stuck on the end. Me, hanging out the dormer windows, crouched there reaching up with one hand, the other clutching the frame.

I never write about my clients who I adore and who come back week after week while we work on their stories, their narrative about who they are, why they are here and how they triumph each minute of every day.

I never write about the incredible films I've seen lately including The Lives of Others which blew my mind in every way and then 3:10 to Yuma the kind of movie my dad would love. Movies about redemption earned the hard way and the awful truth about this life which is that it is ultimately lived Alone.

I never write about the vagina shaman I've been seeing who giggles with me, hands on my belly, soul touching mine.

I have been busy, I have been happy, I have been expanding exponentially outwards but today I am not here for that.

Today I sing a song for the Mermaid who cannot sing right now. She is dear to me and we as friends have been through hell and back again on a twenty year cycle that right now sits with angel wings in her hospital room keeping watch over her because I can’t. Today I have spent every minute in prayer while sitting in my office talking insurance and assets-under-management.

Tonight I will be with my clients and for each of them I will pack up the parts of me that worry for my friend and set them aside for later so that I can be present and complete as I sit and together we weave their stories. Tonight will be a test of how to keep two worlds separate my world of worry never colliding with their worlds of pain while together we create a new world where hope rules benevolently.

Later I will visit for even sick she is a late night girl and I will tell her about the research I did on the vascular surgeons one of them went to Harvard and another interned at the Mayo clinic and we will laugh at my need to make lists on sticky notes of the curriculum vitaes of these men who might not be called on because after all nobody is sure yet why she is there.

Today I sing a song for the Mermaid with a diamond core who will live forever but right now she is hurting and scared and mostly alone. And if you can sing, if anyone is out there who can sing right now please join me because this dear girl this friend of mine believes and I believe that we are all one voice.

Posted by: 120pages at 13:25 | link | comments (1) |

there I was

there I was in the room with them my first clients, one and then the other.

I wanted to share with each what this moment was for me, moment by moment I wanted to capture and hang on forever because finally there I was in the room with them. there I was and I never wanted it to end, I wanted to leap across to the other couch and hold them give comfort. I wanted to jump up and down mid-sentence and say isn't it amazing that this is what I get to do now and for as long as I can do it.

there I was in the room with them these 2 clients these 2 humans and there are not words for the honor I felt the respect I have for this work. there are not words just a lot of silence, a nod, some summary statements, a propping up, a promise to call me first before doing anything final, an agreement from each of them to see me again, once a week on Mondays. because there I was in the room with them and at least last night, that was enough.

Posted by: 120pages at 05:31 | link | comments (4) |

i kiss your hands

my fellow classmates.

we have been through fire and tears together. birth and death and rebirth. we have been witness and warrior, held each other so tenderly that we were unaware of the holding and yet felt so safe we could walk on into the darkness knowing we are not alone.

i am slow to love in this my third decade. slow to love and yet when love comes it wrecks my heart, tears it open, hands itself over to the beloved and says here you keep this now.

as we near our last week together. please do line up hands outstretched so I may kiss them and show you my face and look into yours and we will know that what we have done are doing will do is sacred. I could not be here in this place without having known you and without letting you know me.

i kiss your hands.

Posted by: 120pages at 05:52 | link | comments (1) |

saved by a woman

We went to brunch, my mom and I, normally a meal that arouses suspicion why can't they just call it breakfast or lunch. Normally she would ask me that then worry about which fork to use while ordering the cheapest thing on the menu. Sunday I choose the restaurant with a prix fixe buffet and at a civilized hour we sat across from each other my mother and I she the subject of so many talk, Gestalt, imaginal, Jungian, interpretive dream sessions. She the invisible passenger at whom I yell and rant and rave and Express My Anger. She the pillow in my therapist’s office that I speak to because I do not speak to the real person the one across the table from me going back for dessert from the Mother’s Day brunch buffet at the Golden Valley Brew Pub in McMinnville, Oregon. My home town and I remember when the radio chose that Springsteen tune as I was driving in for a visit not long after my divorce when I was feeling as if I might never get out of life’s tiny barbed wire cage and there I was returning to that small town with twenty churches but only one good coffee shop.

My home town.

We went to brunch, my mom and I and I looked at her this person who is unable to make space in her heart for who I am. This person who fears the answers so much that she cannot bring herself to ask even a question as small as how are you how is school. And I, the invisible child, the one who does not who did not cause trouble in a house full of trouble, I normally don’t breathe again until I can see the signs for Portland up ahead and know that I am going home going back to where I am me. Sometimes in the car I answer the unasked questions. I am well, I say, though school is hard and is stretching me in what feels like impossible ways. I was hoping you would ask, I say.

This Sunday I talked as if she had. As if she had waded through her fears to a place of wonder. I wonder how my daughter is doing I wonder what she thinks about hopes for. I wonder how her experiences are different from mine. I created for her a world of wonder and though at times she held very still as if I were sending arrows out instead of words as if by speaking the truth I were speaking ideas lit on fire that might consume her. This Sunday this mother’s day brunch I answered the unasked questions and while I spoke she held very still until the waiter came by and handed us each a carnation. I gave her mine and she held them both as tenderly as she must have held me when I was a baby before I became something someone separate from her something someone unknown. My mother she cradled these gifts there and thanked me for the brunch and underneath that thanking she seemed also to be thanking me for all of the rest of what I had said. I do not know if this is true but I do know that on my drive home I sang along to Ray LaMontagne. Trouble, he sings about trouble and how he was Saved by a Woman and each time that lyric hit me I yelled it out to the world I’ve been SAVED By a Woman.

and the woman doing the saving the woman in the song that woman was me.



TROUBLE

By Ray LaMontagne


Trouble...
Trouble, trouble, trouble, trouble
Trouble been doggin' my soul since the day I was born
Worry...
Worry, worry, worry, worry
Worry just will not seem to leave my mind alone
We'll I've been...
saved by a woman
I've been...
saved by a woman
I've been...
saved by a woman
She won't let me go
She won't let me go now
She won't let me go
She won't let me go now

Trouble...
Oh, trouble, trouble, trouble, trouble
Feels like every time I get back on my feet
she come around and knock me down again
Worry...
Oh, worry, worry, worry, worry
Sometimes I swear it feels like this worry is my only friend

We'll I've been saved...
by a woman
I've been saved...
by a woman
I've been saved...
by a woman
She won't let me go
She won't let me go now
She won't let me go
She won't let me go now

Oh..., Ahhhh....
Ohhhh
She good to me now
She gave me love and affection
She good tell me now
She gave me love and affection
I Said I love her
Yes I love her
I said I love her
I said I love...
She good to me now
She's good to me
She's good to me

Posted by: 120pages at 12:22 | link | comments (3) |