Bodie

You were born in a heat wave.

Burnt red and brown orange leaves crisped and fell to the warm sidewalks.
In downtown Campbell where we shuffled towards food, Friday night dates wrapped themselves around each other (not in sweaters like on other October evenings).
A summery breeze blew through the valley shaking persimmons from dry branches.

You were born to a waxing moon; another being forming and growing and bellying out into the world, just about reaching full term.

Before you were born, we ate Blue Line pizza and salad and garlic bread and waited for your descent. We gathered on the bed next to you (in there) and watched nature videos and laughed and sewed and told you it was time.
But you had your own clock to follow.
We rushed to the hospital. The nurse on call said to settle in for a long night. I said, I think it will be a quick delivery. I forgot to knock on wood or throw salt over my shoulder or spin around three times. We came home when you stretched out arms and legs in protest but the body around you was still quivering.

We waited and slept and ate almond chicken and red rice, summer vegetables and Caesar salad. We toasted you with wine (and water for you), we asked you to show your tiny face.

A fury of sharpness, of muscle and electric impulses: a commitment (on your part) to the process. Your calisthenics for arrival increased in intensity. Will this be it?

We crossed lanes and towns to the hospital once more, hoping this was for real, hoping it would be quick. I forgot to offer Neptune the wine or sage the room or pray to the quick labor god.

You would not be rushed.

36 to 43 to 52. Hours. Later.

You decided to maybe contemplate kind of perhaps coming out.

I stood in the shower with your mama kneeled on the floor. She was breathing rough, tears mixing with the warm water I sprayed onto her body, your daddy pressing his hands onto her hips and soothing her with soft words.
Every ounce of my being screamed, You are wasting water in a drought! I fought the impulse to shut the faucet off and watched the water hit her taut back, stream down her swollen belly where you squirmed, watched that liquid relief swirl down the drain.
She needed a reprieve. I needed some perspective.

A thin tube snaked next to her spine offered respite from the agony. I knew it would be painful, this process of birthing, this sacred act of one body becoming two and then one again, but I didn’t realize what it would be to witness such pain. It was not your fault, this is how it worked, but she was exhausted and anxious about your arrival; she did not know at that time how beautiful you would be, how muscular and alert and stormy-ocean eyed.

Her legs tingled, she relaxed into fits of sleep.

Her veins filled with oxytocin- a little fluid text message of love and welcome.

Hour 56, you felt it was time. You took the dive.

Pushing and breathing and pushing some more and out you came purple (your mama’s favorite color in childhood) and dark haired and bloody and totally perfect. Onto her chest you went as you cried and sniffled and squirmed. She took you into her arms as if you had always been in her arms, calling you lovey, cooing and smiling and unable to take her eyes off you.
You blinked and settled in to this new life. Outside.

You were born in an October heat wave.

You were born under a gibbous moon.

You were born into breath and tears and love.
 

You have changed this world already with your voice.

I look forward to you telling me (babbling, screeching, mumbling, forming words and dreams) more of your long, twisting, beautiful story in the many years to come.

We Wait

Waiting for a storm of muscles and blood and bone. 

A hurricane of life in ten little fingers, ten toes, a snuffling nose, a tiny heartbeat. 

We wait and breathe and pace. 
I put my shoes on, ready my bag, down a cup of coffee. 

I take my shoes off and wait for the squalls to condense, the fury to magnify. 

Departure is soon, the delivery imminent: a language I can understand. 
She scrunches her face and watches the clock. 

We wait for the word. The car is packed.

I have my camera ready but don’t know when the moment is right. 

We drive into the night, white streetlights streaming behind.

They check, they monitor, they leave. They check, they ask, we leave.

Not ready, they say. 

We get home at 4am and sleep.

I have never wished for someone’s pain to increase, to joyfully anticipate another’s grimace- until now. 

I hope it builds and rounds out, that the momentum continues, that your son is born tonight.

We wait and you drink Coke and we walk around the block, your belly huge under a too-small tank top.

We wonder what the neighbors will say on our second lap in the middle of the street in the moonlight.

We wait and walk and wish for you to cringe in welcome.

Pain and life and joy has never been so apparent, so intermingled, so embraced.

We wait. 

Provided for

There is an apple in my palm. 

There are ants on the apple and bruises on the skin. I brush off the dirt gathered after its fall, its settling on the forest floor. The ants and mites abandon ship and search for other fallen apples among the crunchy leaves. 

White teeth through green flesh into another sweet whiteness with which my mouth cannot compete. I chew, I smile, I scrunch my eyes at the mingling of tart and sugary deliciousness. My fingernails excavate caves of brown and pick at speckles of black across the otherwise smooth surface. I watch a lone mite crawl on the stem and jump off.

I was hungry. 

Not a starving hunger, just a little nibble of a nag, a grumble of intentions south of those (my) lungs gulping fresh air. I had one of those protein bars in my little black bag, next to my water bottle, nestling against my notebook. But I didn’t want a chewy bite of soy that looks nothing like a soybean. I didn’t want that sweetness that sticks to the top of my tongue but doesn’t infuse my whole mouth with luscious thoughts of rain and golden afternoon sun. I didn’t want a square instead of a curved or jagged or root-haired morsel. 

I don’t know why I looked up when I did. Maybe it was the smell of cider mingling with damp leaves in the clearing of this narrow valley. I looked up and saw globes of green hanging from haggard brown branches. 

I thought about climbing. 

I thought about throwing rocks. 

I thought about grabbing and shake shake shaking until orbs of tart came raining down on my head.

Taking action, right?

My eyes pulled down to the earth I breathed in the stillness and birdcalls and slight rumble of a deer trampling down saplings, creating mulchy compost underfoot. Apples were everywhere. I picked up several, gazed into smooshy tan, returned them to the ground. The ants were five steps ahead and devoured flesh and innards alike of the decomposing fruits. Sharing.

I found her: only slightly bruised, minutely gnawed, and totally perfect. For me.

There is an apple in my palm. 

I wasn’t expecting there to be at the beginning of my walk through the woods. I was hungry but I waited for something real. I didn’t really wait, I just walked forward into the shadows and breeze and let my gut speak to the trees. I trusted I would not starve and the universe provided, surprised me. 

This apple makes me happier than anything right now. I trust it will all come to me as I open up my hand, open up my eyes, look up and ground down. Find the bounty surrounding me, not perfect aesthetically, but perfect in this moment to nourish me among my grumbles and sighs.

I take another bite and savor each step into this trust, this process, this devouring of luscious life.

Another (totally different) Passage

Signal Flags

The grab bags are packed and ready by the bunk: water, granola bars, blankets.
She is listing hard. The ballast is deep but the weight rolls and shifts and kicks within her. She hasn’t yet left the dock, the lines (blood and flesh) still hold her.
She will soon be righted.

I am anxious as I go through the aisles of Trader Joe's on this familiar game of passage-making preparation. Who knows how long the passage will be? What should I expect? I provision heavily. Dinner one: bacon wrapped pork tenderloin with mashed taters and sauteed apples. Dinner two: stuffed turkey breast with roasted fennel and onions. Dinner three: portobello mushrooms stacked with roasted peppers, spinach, and goat cheese.
Nothing spicy, nothing too acidic. Don't make anyone sick.

I think on all those evenings gazing up at the emerging stars as a warm bowl of pasta sits on my foul weather geared lap, salt spray seasoning my food. I think of the nights I have been too tired to enjoy eating but needed the companionship a meal provides. I think of the nights held by the water, the sloshing fluid my home and the thumping of the bow through the waves a reassuring heartbeat.

This will be different. The city lights blur out the stars and moon. This roof will be my universe.

How many casseroles should I make? How much freezer space will I have? Will any of us be hungry or too exhausted to eat? I know one of us will be a drinker. It doesn’t worry me. I hope he drinks a lot actually. And sleeps through the night.

He’s not on watch this time with the rest of us.

He is the reason for the watch.

The passage will begin with cramps and contractions and a ride to the hospital. There will be storms with lots of cussing and lulls with hand holding and sweet words. There will be blood and poop and life and joy.

This is a new passage with my listing, rolling, very pregnant sister.

All I can do is cook and clean and feed and support: my usual role, in a very different setting. These cupboards aren’t on the diagonal, these onesies don’t need to be waterproofed, this passage has no set destination.

It is time to throw off the docklines little one! 

(but wait til next week, I hear my sister saying)

You will be our captain, no doubt about it.

I'm ecstatic and terrified and overjoyed for this (your) delivery.

Fair winds and following seas until we meet!

Under A Harvest Moon

The quilt holds us in the moonlight. 

We stretch out and sing loud and lay tangled in a nest of strong bodies, heads on hips, fingers woven into each others hair, shoulders against bellies. 

We howl at the harvest moon and plink hawthorn berries into tea as we whisper of letting go, of love, of growing our hearts open.

We laugh and strum and growl and lay silent and waiting for the light in the darkness to tell us something. 

We listen. 

We write our own stories as we stumble across the rocky earth, we draw the others in with our voices clear and joyful. 

We are each others heartbeats. 

We (I) don’t want the moon-bathed night to end.

I fall asleep under the trees alone in my nylon cocoon. 

I hear the coyotes and chickens and trucks and oak leaves create a symphony of the valley around me.

I leave tomorrow.

Another full moon, another place, another life awaits. 

I will bring my quilt, I will bring my big ole heart, I will let the seeds germinate and grow and create lives of their own. 

I will sip tea and think of these (us) souls on top of a hill in the moonlight, singing, howling, comforting, being. 

I will love and cry and laugh and break open.

I will carry this gratitude with the rocks and shells and notes and tiny flower buds in the cracked mason jar of this one infinite home.

Eat the Truth

It makes me anxious. Terrified really. I don’t want this to happen. I want to shield them from this reality. I want to pluck out the evidence at its source. They may be the last to know even when WE ALL KNOW. We are OK with it. Sort of. We just skirt around the issue as we chew and smile.

But They may not be OK with it. They may not want to skirt anything of the sort.

They will be excited for the day the box arrives. They will come to town with high expectations, a rumbling belly, a head full of dreams of creation and nourishment.

Fwap. Fwap. Plastic arms open into theirs. They gently expose the contents of the mysterious black box they've been waiting for all week. They pull at curly leafed lettuce and poke at the smoothly wrapped gift of cabbage. They lift up the kale to find adorable peppers and a rainbow of chard. They pop a leaf of basil into their mouth unable to resist the memories of warm summer pesto evenings. They pick out their striped tomatoes and peach-colored watermelons. They pile everything into a bag or box and say hello to all of us harvesters sitting at a table eating lunch as they make their way back to their car.

My anxiety grows. I want to warn them. But I also know that this is an important life lesson. That they need to know the facts and I can’t be the one to halt that process. I can’t be the one to pretend like it didn’t happen.

They will get home and plan out dinner. Corn will be on the menu. They will wash the lettuce for salad, chop up the eggplant to fry in olive oil, slice the tomatoes for garnish. Then comes the moment when they peel back the husks and silk and find it gorging on their dinner. Their dinner! Excrement and sloppy chewing filling the space around emptied kernels with a wriggling monstrous worm sloshing away in his own doings.

They will drop the corn and scream. They will throw the corn out the window straight into the compost pile. They will root through the rest of their box looking for wrigglers. They will never buy organic corn (or anything else from the ground) again. EVER. The farm will go out of business.

Pause. Rewind.

These are sensible, CSA, farm loving folks. They know that worms are a sign that the corn is not sprayed with pesticides, not GMO, not dripping with toxins. They know that sharing with the bugs happens, that this sweet corn is delicious to a variety of creatures.

And perhaps they want to know the truth:

Corn comes from outside!

Corn grows up from the dirt!

Corn and all the other organic vegetables inevitably have creatures crawling on them at one point or another whether you see them or not. And sometimes that one point is when they go into the boxes and go home with you.

So why the anxiety? Because I have seen those who won’t touch dirty tomatoes and shrink away from twisted carrots. I have washed my fair share of produce going into CSA boxes to ease folks into the ‘veggies come from dirt’ discovery. But I know the time is now for the link to be solidified between soil and nourishment, that there are so many who are ready for the mental hurdle that bugs on food can present. And we are helping them on that journey.

I start to have faith that these folks will still eat that corn. That they will embrace the worm (or feed him to the chickens) and devour the sweet juicy niblets. That they will appreciate the reminder that all life needs nourishment and who (or what) can resist fresh September corn on the cob? 

I look down onto my plate full of salad from the farm. 

There is a tiny green worm inching towards the edge. 

I smile and let him crawl, the worry dripping away like butter off a cob. I am no longer anxious about the effect the worm in the corn will have. I realize I am actually part of the effect, a source of positive change in this society, thanks to this farmer’s honesty. 

I welcome another creature to our table and keep on eating.

Slow is Beautiful

Blown out hair and Paris Twilight nails. Frozen eyebrows and painted penciled lips. Suitcases stuffed with Lulu Lemon stretchy pants and coolers full of expensive juices. Spike heels and belly tops.

I am in shock. I tug at my skirt dirty with compost and oak leaves, wipe my face with the back of my hand and hope I sucked all the kale greens from my teeth. My fingernails are black with soil from the farm, my arms and face brown and freckled from living and working outdoors.

I help load a cart to help one of these LA yoga retreaters up the hill. She insists on pulling with me, a refreshing change from some of the others who call us porters or girls, their Om t-shirts and Namaste greetings thinly veiling impatience and a distant questioning about room service. 

I breathe in, ground myself, ask where are you from, how was the drive, have you been to this semi-wild land before? She is steps ahead of me, pulling pulling pulling and the cart starts to wobble with the disparity. “Am I walking really quickly or is there something wrong with...the cart?” she asks me. “You are walking pretty quickly,” I answer. She doesn’t slow down. I sense her frustration. But I am not going to speed up. I am quietly laughing to myself, not at her but because I am astonished with myself; I am usually the one who is pulling the hardest, glaring at the slow movers, wanting to get things done done done. 

But on this land I have slowed down and want to welcome that pace in others. How else can you notice all this beauty? I wake with the sunrise with roosters crowing in the valley below after the coyotes have sung their final verse. I move and write and sip and read. I wander through the oaks and wild buckwheat and stop to notice the scrub jay on a branch or how the lizard moves over the dusty clay road. I have time for two-hour meals and take even longer to chop, blend, press, preserve all those farm vegetables I picked this week. I have time to ask, “How are you doing?” and not mean it as a Hey. I actually want to know, want you to talk with me, want to hear your stories and dreams and what you cried about all morning in your tent or why you've been singing love songs all afternoon.

And I don’t want to go back to a place, a space where this isn’t normal.

I lead her to her sleeping space, this woman in a hurry to meditate, to retreat. She loves the view of the orchards in the valley, the rustic beds in the yurt. She wonders about finding the bathroom in the night. I say you can always just go here, motioning to the leaf-littered ground. 

She looks confused. 

I don’t explain. 

I leave her to unpack, feeling a strange pause, knowing that she wondered for a moment about tipping me for my help. I walk away, dragging the cart behind me. Slowly meditating on how I would explain to her that this is my service, this is my way of making this land a more beautiful place by welcoming those who may experience the magic too. That generosity with time and help is not a transaction here. It is an offering. An invitation for connection and interaction, with the people, with the animals and plants, with the everything. 

It took me weeks to get to this unwinding, slow, deliberate point. To the point where I am shocked at this group of “mindful” people and depleted by the searching superficiality I sense in so many of these yoga-fit bodies. I don’t want to judge; I’ve been there too and perhaps am better able to recognize this desperation because of my own struggles. My own weekend retreats (Fix me! Fix me! Give me peace and love in my heart by Sunday, goddammit!), my mala bead groping on the stern of a yacht (dissipate my anger! Maybe one more chant will make me see the good in these people!), my stack of expensive spirituality books (one more paragraph closer to enlightenment). 

I still have a long way to go. 

I am grateful for how far I have come.

I look forward to seeing the transformation. To seeing the woman who brought only heels barefoot on the land. To seeing clean, unvarnished faces sweaty with hope and motion. To seeing the inner workings rise and the chaos of LA fall away into the spaces between the flagstones where the bobcat preens and stalks. I don’t want to have too many expectations, to harbor too many dreams for this bunch. But why not? Between the moving and writing and sipping and reading, why not cast out dreams of healing for these wanderers? That is my service, that is my unbinding contract with the transactionless universe. That is what the land has given me: hope, dreams, and a heaping cart full of love that I can slowly pull and disperse as I go. 

This is what I will take with me when I pack up my car in a couple of weeks. 

This is what I will remind myself of when I slip on heels and brush on mascara and play Big City with the rest of mankind.

This is the space to which I will always return now that I've tasted it. 

Not necessarily to this location, 

but to this groundedness, 

this sacredness, 

this wholeness, 

this living.