Clarity →

Baby no longer in my arms, I step closer to the hole. I cannot see the ground below. I hold the hem of my skirt and put a flip-flopped foot onto a cinderblock jutting out of the concrete wall and start to descend. The smell of damp earth and rotting wood grows stronger with each step down. 

One two three four five six. 

I can hear my baby babbling in my cousin-in-law’s arms in the room I just lowered myself from. I whimper.

I do not want to bring her down here.

I won’t bring her down here.

A week ago I would have brought her down here.

A week ago when all the phones in the vacation rental started blaring I’d assumed it was an Amber Alert. Child abduction on Kauai? Where are they going to go on this two-lane highway?

I picked up my phone and stared at the screen. The message was not about an old Chevy pickup with a child inside. It was about a missile heading for Hawaii. Seek shelter immediately. This is not a drill.

Was this a joke? 

Baby in my arms, the rest of the family out on the deck watching the enormous waves crash against the lava rock shore, I didn’t want to wait to find out. I walked past the wall of floor to ceiling windows and onto the deck, face pale, baby nestled in my arms. I interrupted sips of coffee and sighs about the beauty of clear blue sky to tell them about the alert. I looked up at the sky wondering if we would see it coming. If somehow a missile would create a contrail in reverse to warn us of its path.

Everyone got up to check phones, check TVs, disbelief the initial response. I wanted to be comforted by this disbelief but I wasn’t. Even if it was most likely untrue there was a chance it was true, especially in the current political (insane) climate.

I went back inside to get ready. Get ready? How does one get ready for a ballistic missile attack? Baby in my arms, baby in my arms, baby in my arms. Holding her close and I whispered I love you in her tiny ear over and over. 

In our guest room our luggage vomited its contents onto the floor: clothes, bathing suits, baby books. I fished my wallet out of my bag and put my ID in my pocket. I pulled the comforter off the bed and wrapped my baby in the downy warmth. She wasn’t cold; it was 70 degrees outside but somehow it seemed like a good thing to do. I had to protect her (from shrapnel? Radiation? Sonic boom?) and it was the only way I could think of how to do it.

I tried to get everyone into the windowless garage. My sister-in-law told everyone to put their shoes on. My husband shuffled bottles of water,

a bunch of bananas

and boxes of food, into the garage.

I wondered if I should move the ping-pong table or move away from the rack of snorkeling gear? What happens when a ballistic missile hits a place? Do we simply evaporate or is it like a big earthquake? 

I’d let my daughter out of the blanket to crawl on the garage floor but scooped her up again with these thoughts. How long do we have? My sister-in-law said she wasn’t ready, she was too young to die and wanted more time. I texted my mom and sisters in California about what was going on. I hope its not true, I wrote. I love you, I wrote.

What do you think about when you may be blown up? About all the other people in the world that go through this daily? About what you will leave behind? About what matters most? I stopped my husband from his stocking up and said, “If this is it, I wouldn’t want to be anywhere else. I love you so much.” We held our baby between us and kissed gently and smiled one of those not quite joyous but not quite defeated smiles. 

Such a mix of gratitude and fear. Love and sadness. Disbelief and knowing. 

I sat down and held my baby close as realizations flashed across my brain. My catering business doesn’t matter. Publishing my book doesn’t matter. Leaving a legacy doesn’t matter, whatever the hell that means. Not that those things are bad, they just don’t matter as much as I once thought. What matters? Love. Family. Community. If we didn’t blow up, I wanted to work on our farm, become more self-sufficient and interdependent with our community. Be with my husband and my child. Learn from her about love and curiosity, teach her about empathy and opening our hearts instead of shutting them down to the point where missiles are even a choice.

My husband, baby, and sister-in-law sat in the garage and waited as minutes ticked by. My other in-laws searched Fox news and CNN in the house. Nothing. My husband searched for news on his phone. He found a twitter post saying it was a fluke. My sister texted me updates about her search. False alarm, she said.

False alarm.

Exhale.

Inhale the dankness of this hole in the ground a week later. This is where my new extended family huddled under their house when they got the alert. Underground. Baby in arms and a nine year old sobbing that all the things she loved were OUT THERE, above ground, in the world.

I do not want to bring my baby down here. I will not bring my baby down here or a place like here.

Not this time. Hopefully never. 

I climb out after a few minutes of sweeping a flashlight from corner to corner and shivering at the thought. I hold my baby in my arms again and don’t have to think about what is important. I know what is important as her heart still beats against mine and the birds still sing outside in the world.

Gratitude

Summer. I am watching sun filter through old planks of a barn, prayer flags faded and torn, old couches softly decaying in still light. My desk is an old board nailed to sawed off two by fours, light green paint chipping and floating to join the pine needles and crunchy leaves on the dusty floor. Mosquitoes fill the evening-lit air with motion; a thousand specks of life and movement, no reason, no destination.

I am full of gratitude for this past week (and for this year, this life, but I will be specific in an effort to name my joy). This is how:

I am grateful for home-made, home-picked blackberry pie bubbling over and through buttery crust pressed into a cast iron skillet and the smell that fills the house as it bakes.

For the voices of a dozen men and women gathering on the front porch last night to do nothing but sing melodies and harmonies, sing for singing’s sake, sing for the pleasure of listening.

For a discussion at a potluck on that same porch nights before that ended with a promise to think about shooting deer in her backyard to dress, store, and eat for the winter. And how many island gatherings have had conversations centering around self-sufficiency and efficiently and sustainably maintaining an omnivorous diet in non-conventional (but really traditional) ways.

For a swing in the trees that makes my stomach drop every time as my body flies out of the forest and over the road far below.

For telling fantastical stories after the candles are blown out, the darkness ringing with bright laughter. And singing softly to sleepy ears upon waking.

For a house full of lovely people who grow vegetables and make food and call for community in so many different ways.

For the opportunity to open myself ever more deeply to love and connection in all of its various forms.

For bone broth soup made with beef from cows raised less than a mile away and veggies from the garden I help to grow.

For dolphins (porpoises?) surfacing in the sound as my kayak paddles touch glassy cold water. 

For dancing and running and leaping on the beach reminding me that all we are meant to do in this life is have fun and that fun comes in many different forms as does love and pain and growth.

For a tree rotting from within shepherded reverently from sky to ground.

For sleeping outside underneath the stars, underneath a bright moon, circled by a quiet army of trees, circled by quiet arms.

For sipping dream tea in the evenings, laps covered in quilts, bullfrogs shouting stories across the pond, owls questioning everything.

In the darkness of presence and prayer

A tumbled notion of mountain glows red hot in the center, sage and sweet grass catching fire between heart and human. We sit in a circle under heavy blankets placed with love, placed with the intention of community and voices howling, singing, praying into the cedars.

Prayer. 

I never thought I would say that word in association with any action of mine but here I sit in the pitch black darkness save smoky tendrils illuminated by ancient spittle of volcano. Here I sit with water pouring forth; onto the fire and out of my body, out of my eyes, rivers of words flowing from my mouth and into the lagoon of steam in front of us. An ocean of intention ebbing and flowing between naked bodies and shedding hearts. Here I sit.

What is ceremony? 

This word that for so long made me cringe and swear, a numbing set of rules containing what cannot be contained. It has changed, transmuted into a basket woven to hold, not enclose; to offer, not force. It is a chance to sit with others and be vulnerable in safety, to speak truly and freely into a mold that dissolves when we kiss the threshold and emerge into the light.

The sage is ash, the stones have cooled. 

I submerge myself in the pond at the edge of the clearing. I am held and encompassed and free to float in the dark water, the lingering smoke of dreams drifting in the rain flecked air. 

We breathe, we release, we nourish. 

We are sweat and bones, we are fire and intention, we are still in this moment and a flash of starlight screaming through the universe. 

We are seen, heard, held in the basket of darkness, in the naked arms of community, in the charred memories of wood and stone. 

We are present.