Buck Up

You wear your sex like a weapon, but look, I ain't afraid

I'm a trisexual Californian - I've been every kind of laid

You say in almost fifty years you've never felt so fried

but your words are cancelled out by the crazy in your eyes

You try and front like you're a victim, but hon I know your type

You think past trauma gives you license, but I don't believe the hype

It wasn't me who hurt you

No - I didn't cause those wounds

Your anger is too old for me,

and frankly you're way too old too.

You need to grow up and stop acting like a fool

I haven't seen these kinds of antics since my elementary school.

And at the end of the day

despite the games you play?

Your bed

is made.

You're mental ministrations may be fucking with my life

But bring it on

It's been too long

since I've had this much to write

You call foul 'cause you're sad; because you're going through hard times.

Well my life is shitty too - but I don't have an axe to grind.

You lost your daddy and that's sad - but I lost my baby, too

and I keep on living life because that's just what people do.

So buck up,

Shut the fuck up,

and suck up.

The Launch

I pulled the hand-trailer across the hardened sand, then dropped it about 20 yards from the sea lions. It was early yet and they were still asleep, but with their pups around I wanted to give them a wide berth. Slipping the red boat off the trailer and carrying it a ways till reaching the boggy, puddly stuff, I looked out toward the hook, toward the sun peeking up beyond the hills, and the slice of Pacific just beyond. Light glinted off the water, but I didn’t see any whitecaps. Amazing.

The seals seemed perfectly at peace. In fact, aside from a few downed eucalyptus trees, you could almost believe that everything was normal. I tossed the boat into the shallows, checked the drybag one more time, then climbed in.

Once out on open water, the waves were indeed quite calm, but my heart began to race. This stretch of the Pacific, between Point Reyes, the Faralons, and San Francisco, is called the Dead Zone for good reason. Great Whites frequent the area, drawn by the cool currents and abundant seal colonies. From below, I knew I looked exactly like a fat seal. I scanned the periphery for fins constantly, but kept a steady pace, letting my thoughts return to the day before.

We’d been expecting it for years, but still somehow – these things always come as a shock. I’d just kissed John and Ethel goodbye for the day, and they rode off on John’s bike, Ethel waving bye from the little seat in the back. Raina, now quite the big girl in kindergarten and all, was painstaikingly finishing the laces on her right shoe. I was looking down at her, trying to maintain my patience when it happened. The earth began moving.

Almost immediately, we heard glass breaking. Raina’s face turned up to mine, her mouth a silent “0” and I grabbed her and began to run. The ground was shaking so violently that I stumbled, bringing both of us to the lawn several times, before reaching the open street. I folded my body around her, not hearing her cry, no longer hearing anything around us. Only wondering, praying, beseeching any God or Gods that existed to please save my other baby, to please save my husband.

Then, as suddenly as it had begun, the shaking stopped.

Nearly finished and still wet from a coat of Mod Podge finish.

Precarious

Washing dishes just now, stacking things high in the drainer, I was startled when they suddenly shuddered and then collapsed down into a new position. I stopped my scrubbing for a moment, prepared to rescue the hand-blown glasses (a gift from our realtor - we would never buy anything so breakable ourselves), but then realized that no - the dishes had already worked themselves out. Now that they'd tumbled against eachother a bit - unbroken, thank goodness - they had reached an agreement and were now in a more stable position.

And then, as is usual around our house these days, my thoughts turned to death. Or, rather, dying. Both John and I are in the process of losing our last maternal grandparents. My grandmother Ethel - his grandfather Robert (a.k.a. Bum). Both of whom served larged roles in our childhoods.

My grandmother picked me up after school every day when I was young. My mother worked;my dad wasn't around; but I had my grandmother all to myself. She helped me with my homework, took me on long walks downtown, taught me to bake, to jump rope, and how to hold a decent conversation. She took me to Yosemite for my birthday every year, listening to my poems about mustard and lupine as we drove the long way there. She thought I was brilliant.

Now, at 97 years old, she is slowly letting go. After three knee replacements she walks - amazingly - through a combination of cane, walker, and pure will. She hosts my uncle for scrabble and salmon each Monday, and she still maintains her own home - but only with a lot of help from my mother. She's had her share of falls, and her heart is not good. Last week, a scare with pneumonia brought it all into focus, and for a few days I was an absolute mess. It didn't look like she was going to make it and I wasn't sure that I would, either.

But the over-thinker in me had to wonder - why? She's 97, after all. I know she won't last forever, and we don't even talk all that regularly. A phone call every month or so, letters back and forth. I see her once a year. But - when I see her I am still her little girl. And when she leaves, I will be saying goodbye to her from the perspective of my smallest, most vulnerable self.

How is it that parents and grandparents, when they go, have the power to turn us back into children? As the recent flurry of worried emails passed among my family members, it was everywhere between the lines: my uncle Jim railing against the emergency room, my aunt offering expensive and unnecessary equipment, disagreements around treatment and subtly barbed thank yous among the siblings... and barely concealed behind their words were their child-selves rocking back and forth, whispering, "Mama. Mama. Please don't go."

I feel it too. I know my grandma's long since made her peace with leaving earth, so why can't I? It's fear - that's all I can figure. It's scary to lose a parent figure, though their absence may play no real part in our current day-to-day existence. But loss or the threat of loss transports us back - to a time that somehow stands still somewhere inside us.

As children, our parents and some of our grandparents were the absolute centers of our lives. Or - actually - we perceived ourselves as the centers of theirs. Perhaps that's what we mourn - the idea (no matter how real it is, no matter how far we've come since) that we are losing the one person whose life revolves around our own.

As John said the other night - trying to sort through his own grief - it's selfish, isn't it? The pain is not about what the dying are feeling - what they will miss - it's all about ourselves. We may think "they'll never see our first child, or attend our wedding, or see this or that dream of ours realized" but it isn't about them. It's about us. It's about losing that feeling of a person wholly devoted to you - who revels in your smallest and largest accomplishments like nobody else in the world. They saw you born, they saw you crawl, they clapped when you pooped in the potty. It is, in a way, losing the last vestiges of our superego - our claim to the center of the universe. And even if it is irrational; even if it comes from a very childish place, it's real and it hurts like hell.

I take comfort though, in my dishes. They rattle against each-other and slip closer to the sink. But when they come to a rest, they rest softly. And meanwhile, I've got my grandmother's cupcakes in the oven.

Thank you Grandma, and thank you Bum. You do what you have to do. We'll be okay.

working...

progressing

The Curds of Love

It's in the laundry folded

and the dishes put away

in the arms I know are waiting

at the end of a long day

in your downy hair and skin

in your scratchy stubborn chin

and the way, when I begin to sing,

you always jump right in

it's your lips on mine each morning,

and your hands on me at night

it's in your gentle nature

but especially in your fight

in your freckles and red hair

and your lack of underwear

the scent of bike grease on your neck and ears

the way you fill a chair

from how you look in glasses

to how you've learned to cook tofu

There's something monumental

in the smallest things you do.

Some works in progress..

It's been a while. My art appears to be stacks of laundry at this moment in time. Actually, I have a few paintings going in the basement right now, but I don't want to post anything until I've got a finished product. Maybe a show is in order. With Jesse's help, perhaps I'll get my art out there again. (He's my biggest fan.)

But first, Puerto Rico...

It's the Most Wonderful Time of the Year

We were supposed to have prime rib for Christmas dinner, but instead we went to Waffle House. It was one of a series of holiday surprises - like our first flight from Vermont to North Carolina getting canceled, our second and third flights getting canceled (but not till we'd made it to JFK), and then learning that the next available flights to Raleigh would not depart till after the holiday.

One very expensive "economy" car rental and 30 hours later, we managed to crunch/slide/will our way up the un-plowed mountain road to our cabin in the woods. The sun was just starting to glow from behind the mountains, and my family awoke to meet us. It was almost like a Folgers commercial except that we went immediately to bed, and when we woke up there was much better coffee.

It was a wonderful week of playing in snow with my five-year-old nephew, sitting in the hot tub watching the waterfall, and playing board games with my fantastically wacky family. Then on Christmas morning we all awoke to find that... the power was out! Although Santa had visited us and left plenty of presents, he did not find it necessary to leave us a generator or any means for cooking, flushing the toilet, or otherwise maintaining civil society.

We hit the road. And about a half hour down the mountain, we understood the reason for the outage. For about a hundred miles of our drive, everything was encased in ice. The trees - bent over tapping at each-other, collapsed into the snow, or splintered into a thousand pieces across the road, and power lines of course - drooping and swaying with the weight of the frozen rain. It was a scary, but magical ride.

And that's how, three hours later, we ended up at the Waffle House outside of Greensboro. If you've never been, then imagine a Denny's - but more casual. We had to split up into groups as the House was apparently quite popular on Christmas Eve. Not with Jewish waffle-lovers as you might think, but with teenagers who'd just escaped from familial festivities, weary travelers like us, and even a few families wearing their finest, obviously out for their traditional and much anticipated Waffle House dinner.

Our waitress couldn't have been more than 19, but she yelled our orders for waffles, hamburgers, and hashbrowns out with the authority of a thirty-year-old. She made sure my nephew got his waffle within five minutes of sitting down, entertained his requests for ice in his water and ketchup for his waffle "when I was a kid, all I ate was ketchup, just straight out of the bottle, and I turned out fine," and chatted with us about children - she had 2 of her own. She didn't seem bothered to be working on Christmas, or the fact that she was just starting her life, had two kids, and a job at the Waffle House.

She just did her job, and did it very well. I imagined her going home late that night (she told us she was on till 3 a.m.), checking on her sleeping babies, counting her tip money out and placing it carefully in a jar. Then she would clean up the dinner dishes, perhaps do some laundry, slide into bed for a few hours and wake up the next day to do it all over again. It sounds kind of depressing as I write it all out, but she had one of the nicest smiles you've ever seen.

Here's my holiday wish: that our Waffle House waitress gets everything she hopes for. And as for me: I hope that in the coming year I can be more like her. Taking what life gives me and making the best out of it. Doing my job well, listening to the stories of the people I meet, taking care of my family, and loving that I get another day to do it all.

The Night Before Friday

Twas the night before Friday,

And all through the place,

Not a creature was stirring –

At least not John or Grace.

The squirrels were all scuttling through their wall-nests with care

And as John pointed out Grace had lured them all there.

Well, I'm sorry, she said gruffly

I stopped feeding them last fall.

And I think it’s your smell that they like best of all.

The two were all snuggled quite warm in their loveseat,

And one (you guess who) had the stinkiest stank-feet.

When they spied the table, filled with notes from their friends

With photos and tales of the places they’d been.

So what should we write? Was the question at hand

Compared with new babies, our life’s pretty bland.

You got a new bike – said Grace to McMurry

Plus you shaved, so your face isn’t quite so very furry.

Hey - you shaved your legs – he replied – that’s momentous;

Four months ago, though. Hey - is that brittle they sent us?

And quick as a flash, the task was forgotten

As the two stuffed their maws with the candy they’d gotten

I wrote this last year, but it still fits just right.

Merry Christmas to all and to all a good night.

Something new.

Summer

is a laughing child in a small plastic pool

on wet grass that will soon scorch to yellow,

too long to be cut with the push mower.

A shrieking kid standing by

bandaid flapping in the damp breeze

sunburn pulling lips down,

hot tears evaporating into the bright cloudless day.

Summer is the smell of banana boat lotion and the warmth

of my hair against the back of my neck.

Cheap white wine mingling with ice cubes,

sweating it out in a jelly jar with Fred Flinstone's face.

running across wet grass

falling, slipping, laughing then screeching because

summer means not holding it in

summer is the beginning of all things.

Summer is a rash from the lifejacket that rides up with the strap

and pancakes for dinner and sleeping without blankets

towels that never quite dry

and living on sun.

Summer is made of days that don't end.

Hours made of minutes made of seconds that

tick tick tick between blades of grass

standing upright and tall

Fragile, transparent and so green.

This is a simple drawing I did of my daughter by the baby pool in our backyard.

The Understanding

It wasn't the first time the plate had been empty, but by god it would be the last.

Harold surveyed the empty expanse of tin, then glanced up, cocking his right eye toward the big house. They were in there all right. All four of them. It was their morning feeding time. They like to sleep well past the rise of the sun, then awake with a rousing hubbub, all their wired items ringing, shouting, and clanging at the same time.

Now they were seated in the large glass area, around the communal platter. Eating gargantuan amounts of mushed up something-or-other. Well, wasn't that nice?

Harold bent his knees, and lifted up off the plate, off the pedestal, and with a few flaps landed on the railing outside the glass. They didn't notice. They rarely did, so consumed were they with the cacophany of their own lives. The small ones banged metal instruments on the wood, singing their terrible, mocking song. The older ones chittered to their young, cutting their feed into small pieces, but allowing them - grotesquely - to digest it all on their own.

Harold hopped a bit closer down the railing, tilted his head so that the other eye now glared in toward the large female. It was she who was in charge of his plate.

Every few days or so, she could (usually) be counted on to bang open the hatch to their dwelling, carrying sacks full of food which she placed into metal cannisters, then stopping by Harold's plate with a handful of seed.

In return, it had been established that Harold would live out the winter in the giant oak tree nearby. He often sang for the family, when they ventured outdoors. Complicated songs that he spent hours composing, melodies which bespoke the coldness of the season, the beauty of the dying sun, and - GODDAMN IT! Was it so hard to remember his seed?

Harold hopped up and down on the railing a few more times, fluffing his feathers a bit, but they did not turn to look. Desperate, he launched at the glass,managing to get several good beak taps in, his toes scratching for purchase on the cold, smooth surface, till he landed in a heap at the bottom.

Harold stared up at the blue sky, unable to move. His heart beat loudly in his chest, causing his whole body to quiver.

Bang! The hatch had been opened, and soon, Harold saw the family's faces, hovering over him. Harold lay prone, waiting. Gathering strength. The adults twittered to each other, while the fledglings leaned in closer. Harold grew nervous.

But then the youngest, a male, gently laid a flat object near Harold, nearly as big as the bird. It was food. It smelled of seeds, and grains, and berries. It was round and flat, and Harold nibbled at it. It was delicious. Like a million perfect seeds had been regurgitated into a fluffy cake by his own mother herself, god rest her soul. Harold ate.

That afternoon, as Harold sang his sunset concerto toward the family's wooden nest, his metal tray full to overflowing with seeds, he wished he had another of those lovely foodcakes.

But he never did.

Here is an old drawing that I did when I lived in Chicago.

It's November

again.

Bare branches stare through windows and

outside people walk; footsteps on cold concrete

so loud without leaves or sun.

The furnace is on but cold seems to linger

in corners and just under the floor

I run a bath.

The sound of water as it rushes

luxury of pulling out salts, oils, trashy book.

Heat envelops

I dip my head under

feeling it all the way to my follicles, to the insides of my ears

then emerge, breathing in steam,

drape the washcloth over my heart

and escape to a mystery not my own.

Too soon, drafts of the house draw warmth from the bath

water turns tepid

and I'm left shivering, knees to chest

cold wetness dripping down

Not ready to get out yet,

and still so cold.

Well here it is. The first art post to our old zine, Wee. My husband and I recently lost our baby in utero during the eighth month of pregnancy. This was a drawing that came out of our sadness.

Noel