Landed in the 'Burgh

We walked through security toward baggage claim and there was an announcement and handwritten sign posted: "Halftime, Steelers 3, Ravens 13". People moaned, out loud, in a group expression. I suddenly knew I was not in Kansas anymore, Toto, but rather home in the 'Burgh, land of the Terrible Towel. We managed to get thru town well before the end of the game, and even got back here to Memoo's in time to see the Steelers win, so all is well. :)

This is wedding week central here. My oldest goddaughter, your cousin Kristin, is getting married, and in honor and tribute to my Mimi, my goddaughter's grandmother, I have to tell you she has baked over 700 cookies in the last few weeks!!! Mimi's yummy delights will not be revealed until wedding day. Rumor has it there will be two kinds of biscotti, pizzelles, lady fingers, peanut butter balls, tea knots, and more. So much for giving up sugar!! Well, for this week anyway.

Last week at conference actually proved to be pretty easy to stay away from sugar and find good options other than wheat. I had only one truly loopy day there. And things here in the 'Burgh could be easy-ish, too, but I'm simply making exceptions. We don't often have the chance for real Italian food and Mimi's cookies! And since I don't know how to make her cookies -- I don't know if any of us in the next generations of the family do! -- it always feels like a yummy chance I don't want to miss. And maybe a gateway to the touchstones of a long ago (possibly over romanticized) :) childhood.

Also thinking a lot about life's transitions and joy and grief and how it all seems to come in one breath. You know, Kota, that Mimi's husband died a few years ago. We all adored Unkie. Mimi says if she could have custom ordered a husband, she'd not have done as well as she did when she got Unkie. He was a good being. A treasure. And though I don't know how often Mimi expresses it, she misses him terribly. At dinner she was a little teary. "We had 53 wonderful years together. He was so good. I didn't deserve a man as good as he was," she says. And then she mentions that while she's glad to hear I dream of him and his cousin dreams of him, she fears her crying keeps his spirit away from her. She's never had a single dream of him. She heard a wives tale that said crying keeps the souls of loved ones from us. Oh, my heart breaks.

I tried to assure her that was not true. I tried to tell her I've cried much since you died, Kota, and you've come to me in dreams. Tried to assure her that crying is an expression of love. But it is a tale that seems to be ingrained. My meager protests don't sink in past the layers of the old wives. So I tell her that when I dream about Unkie next, I'll tell him to go see her! And heck, at this time of year with the veil so thin, I think I may make some of my Day of the Dead rituals dedicated to asking him to go see her for goodness sake! Kota, if you are there and so is Unkie, could you let him know, too? Can't hurt for him to hear it from multiple voices. It's the only thing I can think to do to try and give Mimi comfort. Well, besides just letting her talk and cry as much as she wants, to give her that without judgement or reserve. She's such a good person. Amazing really. Her life is so interesting. She has always been present and so filled with grace and good.

Heck, I figure, if nothing else, the woman baked 700+ cookies this month even with her bad knee and hurt hip, she deserves the miracle of a dream from Unkie! You hear me, Uncle Henry??! Just visit with her, okay?!

Now for the merry wedding!

Next up is wedding goodness. We have lots of family coming, dinners, visits, rehearsal, wedding, photo taking, etc. Father of the bride was down with the flu today. Been sending Reiki for healthy vibes for Father of the bride to be well and to keep all others healthy, too!

Got to chat with Kris and Nathan tonight about photos. See your dad is doing all the photography for them. Think it will be fun and can't wait to see Hawk's vision for them. They had lots of ideas and made a great checklist for us to see all the kinds of shots they hope to get. Praying for clear, cool weather so we might take advantage of outside, natural light. Maybe hit a park or two for bridal party photos. We'll see.

Anyway, got to see their new home and meet their kitty-cat for the first time tonight. It's so crazy to be seeing her in her grown up life. I remember a beautiful baby girl. I was madly in love with her and had the greatest summers looking after her when I was a teenager. When she was two, she would go around the house opening drawers and taking all the stuff out of them. It was the funniest quirk. I remember teaching her to swim and hanging out in the pool with her for hours on sunny afternoons. Gosh, it seems like yesterday and a million years ago at the same time. And all those memories make me a little wistful for all the memories you and I don't have, Kota.

And I have to wonder, when will I return to the 'Burgh next after this? Will it be for the baptism of her babies?

Meditating on the Now

Must admit it is a very challenging practice to stay in the NOW while I'm here. So many memories and touchstones floating around. Things rise to the surface, and I'm not sure what they are or from whence they came. It is a revolving carousel of then, now, to be. Maybe part of it is that I'm still a bit loopy, too? Not sure my body has caught up with all the travel and time changes.

Tried to stay present and hold the hands of the people I love throughout the day today. Made every effort to be present at every bite of yummy home town goodies. Really felt the comfort of my goddaughter's home as she made us all feel so welcome and loved. And so grateful to Memoo and Jeppy, your grandma and grandpa, for hosting us, opening their home including letting me do laundry, having Mountain Dew on hand for Mr. Hawk, and giving us such a cozy landing spot to sleep and process.

Talents in our family...

It often strikes me that I wonder if you would have had a singing voice like your dad, and musical talent like your brother Peter.

Someone once asked me, "If you could have any talent or ability, what would it be?" Answer:

Anything. I wish I could sing. Just anything. Opera. Jazz. Folk songs. Lullabye. Anything. I wish I could open my mouth and hear something in tune and lovely flow out from my heart, from my mood, from my core.

I wish I could sing a classic like One For My Baby and have it sound swingin'. I wish I could sing a Weepies tune or Joan Osborne tune and sound like a GRRRL singer. Or how about a Cindy Lauper or Luscious Jackson tune. Or just to sing out when grief really hits me.

But nooooooooooooooooo. I'm flat. I'm tuneless. Hopeless. Not to mention scared and unable to just open my breath and let anything flow. It comes out all raspy, uptight, and griping.

Ah, well. I guess as long as your dad is willing to put up with my tuneless screeching in the shower, that's good enough and will have to serve my musical longings. But it still crosses my mind now and again, wondering what your singing voice would have been like, Kota. I miss you.

DAKOTA'S TEXTURED ANGEL...

March 11, 1999 
4:47pm 
Born and died 

It is a very odd thing to give birth to death. I was prepared for an entirely different experience. Prepared from the time of sex education class in 6th grade all the way thru birth preparation class 6 weeks before the due date. The books, the parenting magazines, the nursery furniture catalogues, the meetings with obs and doulas, the sonograms, hypno-birthing sessions. It's all about life. Giving birth to life. Which of course is just right for some huge percent of the population. 

Just wasn't right for my percent of the population. 

And truth be told, even if you had tried to prepare me for giving birth otherwise, I would have laughed in your face. I mean this isn't a third world country. I don't have any compromising diseases. We certainly didn't the quality of healthcare that a wealthy family might buy, but we weren't getting our pre-natal care at a street clinic either. Ha ha in your face. Are you joking? That's what I would have said. 

When you stand on the bricks in the Red Tent, it isn't until death is actually issuing forward from your womb that you realize you are nothing in this equation. You are simply a portal between life and death. Sometimes the portal spills out in an oxygen, star filled, thriving, living planet. Sometimes the portal spills out in landscape of Mars where there may once have been life, hidden in those ancient ice crystals, but there is no human breathing there now. 

At 4:47pm on Thursday afternoon, March 11th, 1999 at 47.71472 latitude and -122.33472 longitude, a portal opened thru me and I gave birth to death. 

Today, Nine Years Later 

And so today we move through the ninth anniversary of this space age event. I've touched down in the gravity of homelessness, prosperity, travel to new lands, artistic endeavors, meditation explorations, mental and emotional dysfunction of one family, the support and love of the other functional family, and a zillion other experiences. 

It has not been a linear path by any means. I've danced round and round, slowing finding a way, integrating the paradox of birth and death into this one being. 

I know now there is no way to truly know that experience. Anything I think I know is simply ego. Any experience or thoughts I glom onto with fervent passion are just ego. There is no religion, politics, academy of study, philosophy or psychology that isn't anything more than ego. It isn't good or bad. We can't really shake away from ego. It's part of the human experience. But there is something beyond ego.

There is witness. 

And this witness has stayed with me through it all. It allows me to value both Dakota's life and death and the spiritual rebirth of the other-worldly entity also named Dakota. It allows me to value all the extremes of marriage, the blessings, the mundane, the ugly, the love, the feel of a partner who has seen the depths with me. It allows me to gleefully watch the life and growth of our living children and grandchildren while never diminishing the place any deceased child holds within a family structure. It allows me to understand the value of time we have when alive -- with my husband, my mother, my friends -- and to full acknowledge the time that will come when they and I will no longer be alive -- and to have no fear about that at all. 

And so today... 

there is nothing here for you today except witness. 

A textured angel whose every bump marks what it sees. 

If you have someone or something you wish to witness outloud, too, feel free to leave a comment here today. You do not witness alone either. 

Miracles, 
k-

JUST WANTING TO CHAT WITH YOU, KOTA...

Hi Honey... 

Thinking about you a lot tonight. Daddy, your brother Peter, and I were sitting for hours tonight just chatting about everything and anything. When we were done, I got online and made the mistake of reading the news where, of course, there were numerous stories about senseless deaths of children. My heart began to ache for those families. For the cruelty of this physical manifestation of a world. For how much every parent aches when a child is physically gone. And then, of course, I began to miss you and think about how you would have been in our hours of chatting this evening. 

Would you have chimed in with your own chatting? Would you have been bored? Would you have fallen asleep with your head in my lap while we hummed on in conversation? I have no idea who you would be by now. My gawd, I miss you. 

At the same time, I think to myself, "And yet, Kara, he was here, he is here, he is all over your experiences of life." You often come into my awareness as a sprite'ling of energy, an unmaterialized being, a guardian angel near by. 

When I was out walking today, there were almost no cars the whole time, very few people I could hear, and the trees are still thick evergreen and everything hung with the quiet layer of moss, crisp, moist air all around, a bright grey and amazing smell of winter. For the most part, I was totally alone. Silence except the birds and cows. The water of the Sound stirring off in the distance and a few sea gulls screeching. 

I stopped in the middle of the lane. Looked up the road and down. Realized that this world is magical. Something I dreamed of many years before discovering it. And as I looked around, trying to be as conscious and grateful as possible, I felt like I did as a kid playing my imaginary friends. Beings all around me, protecting, playing, lively. And I felt your little sprite'ling being. Could see you playing up and down as we walked. Pointing out the last flowers trailing on by a thread on the berry bushes. Getting excited about the horses in the stables as we wondered by. You and I. Almost two hours, walking together. 

Well, anyway, I just wanted to say thank you. Thanks for walking along with me. Thanks for chatting in your own way with me. I didn't have my cell phone with me today to snap a photo, but on our walk tomorrow, I'll try to remember. And then I'll post a photo here, okay? I love you, honey. So much. 

xoxoxo's and miracles, 
Love Momma

ALL THE ANGELS...

Hi Kota. 
Been thinking about you a lot as notes and cards have poured in for Infant & Child Death Awareness Day (oct 15th) and Month (all of October). It means a lot to me that so many people think of you. 

And then I got to thinking about all the angels no one thinks of anymore. Child death has been a part of humanity since the beginning of time. So that means bereaved parents have been a part of humanity, too. And how many billions have passed, dust to dust, back to the ether of the universe, names long forgotten now. 

While stewing on that idea, my mind flitted around and landed on three souls who were killed in a car accident when I was a young teenager. Beaner, Link, and Vig. I had spent that whole school year with the maddest, silly school girl crush on Beaner. Given my life experience up to that point, I was convinced I loved him. In a way, I did, though he took no more notice of me than pesky friend of someone's baby sister, you know? But I remember his laugh. That sly grin. How much his mother must miss him. 

His sudden death was my introduction to this crazy grief experience. To that long-lasting battle, trying to reconcile the physical absence with the ever-present love that never goes away. 

I was so much younger than Beaner that I really didn't know him, you know? I wonder now, did he have a steady girlfriend who mourned him? Had he lost his virginity yet? Was he planning to go far away to college or stay with a home-state campus to play football? What was his favorite color? I know he had/has a sister. Did he have other siblings? Do they now have kids? 

All pretty much unknowable. 

I remember the morning I answered the phone. Shaye was on the line crying. They are all dead. That's what she said. They died. She said. I told her to leave immediately and meet me at the jr. high football field. She and I often met up there. She was already on the bleachers when I got there. I remember being cold. The field was huge, silent, empty as was the parking lot, the whole school. Must have been a Sunday maybe. We sat there till we shivered I think. Or something else made us finally decide to go back to her house. We went in thru the kitchen door around the back as we sometimes did. 

And I remember being struck by how different the kitchen seemed now. No matter what we did or didn't do from now on, that kitchen would never again fill up with Beaner's laugh. It was a sudden lesson in the finality of death. And introduction to a lifetime of transition. 

Everyday before, and everyday since, there are children who go through death's veil to the other side. How many are unnamed now because no one remembers. 

Well, for what it is worth, Beaner -- Chris -- I remember you. Kota, if you happen to run into him over there, give him a little hug for me and tell him I'm sorry there wasn't time for me to find out all those details about his life and love. 

Love you, baby. 
-Momma

KOTA, DID YOU DO THAT?

The most scary thunderstorm came through the island today, the loudest, most drenching storm, sudden, fierce, shaking the whole house. And then just as suddenly, the sun broke through it all. The rain still assaulting the earth, the thunder still outcasting silence, but still, all around us the brightest sunshine I've ever seen.

And then in a flash, I was overcome with feelings of you.
Did you do that?
Was that you?

Makes no difference what meaning I nor others ascribe to the events. In the stirring of my very DNA, I could feel you today. Thanks for the visit. Maybe I should stop by here and write more often 

Love you!
xoxo's from mum

THE MORE TIME THAT GOES BY...

Hi Kota. The more time that goes by, the more I wonder at the life we've been left living since your death. It's as if you taught us what the mother of all transitions is like: the death of previously constructed self, the neutral zone of a neither-land, the total destruction of what was, the emerging of the redefined self, the slow rebuilding, atom by atom, sand grain by sand grain, pebble by pebble, rock by rock, brick by brick. 

I have always lived somewhat off the grid, on the fringes. But your death pushed me completely out of the realms of this quick witted bloom and fade world. I was forced to the floor. Many days I am again forced with the weight of a 1,000 Buddhas completely flat. And the unforgiving speed of broadband life whizzes by while I am languished in different kind of world. 

And nothing has ever been built again in some faux, rock solid pattern of an ancient castle that is still used and lived in. But instead there is an ebb and flow. Like a monk going out into the world, gathering wealth and material items as he works, only to come back to the homeless shelter of the monastery and give it all up to the community fund. 

I don't know. This is all conjecture. I actually have no answers at all. 

Except to know that I have not been able to define anything since the moment you died. Neither self nor love, neither relationship nor work, neither living nor learning. There is no definition for anything. 

It is all constantly fluid and always moving and never the same twice. It's always the ocean, but it never ceases changing, moving, flowing. 

What's that line from Now Voyager: 

Let's not ask for the moon. 
We have the stars. 

Maybe that's it. If you ask me if I'll be happy, I won't be able to say yes. But only, "Let's not ask for the moon. We have the stars." 

Anyway... 
Hey Kota, tell Joel I send my thank yous to him for being so present to his Mom these last 6 weeks. She really needed that! I can't wait to finally chat with her and hear all about it. 

Miracles and much love to you -- and Joel, too... 
xoxox 
Mom