symbiosis

My tidy husband has swept old journals back into their box and up to the shelf.  I had hoped to pick up where I left off yesterday.  Now they are out of reach and I am left grinning at my childishness and his care-taking of me.  He prompts me to wear my seatbelt, to bring the insurance card, to vacuum the mini-van. I accept all this guidance because I know I am only mostly an adult.  Like a teenager, I still believe I don't need a seatbelt, and all ailments will be cured with a stout, sweaty 4 mile run.
When I wear high heels, our noses meet.  Without them, my head rests under his chin.  This creates an illusion.  He is stronger than I am.  He is taller, wider,  heavier more capable with his rough mits for hands.  I used to hold his palms in mine and study them.  I'd turn them over and over like a sandy, beach treasure.
How can they be so dry and not hurt?  How can you just let them crack and bleed?  How can there be spots  which will never come clean?  Engine grease is pressed so deep into the crevises that it didn't even come out on our wedding day.
He can withstand things I can't understand.
He props up my everyday life.  He is my steel frame.

Pepper and Dad at our first house

Because he of him, I am free to simply tell the truth and let it be.
I get to write without worrying that it will ever be lucrative. He offers me a luxury far better than any object.  I have stumbled over this often, but never told him.  Without Andrew's support, I would feel immense pressure to BE something.  One thing I learned in school, when you MUST be creative, it is nearly impossible to think of anything good enough.
Without a partner, I could not be a whole-hearted artist and a mother.  My energy would be sucked away by the daily tasks and expenses, which he assumes for me, for us.

I get to be with our kids every single day.  I greet them when they wake up and hold them in their jammies.  I sing to them, "Good morning to you....we're all in our places...with bright shining faces."
We stay in our p.j.'s until 10, and make pink waffles.
They move in and out of days with ease, one trickling onto another like a pond accumulating a delicate soul.

Sarah

This is my gift to him.  This family.  Sarah, Sophie, Pepper and Beckam.

Sarah to fold into at the end of the day. Sarah to sit on the back of the toilet and listen to his stories while he takes a shower. Sarah to make morning coffee.  Sarah to dance with at weddings.  Sarah to catch eyes with across the room and to know without words.

Sophie

Pepper

Sophie to battle and to adore.  Sophie to challenge his authority and make him laugh at himself.  Sophie to flip through the house and stir up the air.  Sophie for tenderness to Pepper when we have none left






.


Pepper to wear sparkly shoes at the end of whispy legs.  Pepper to squeeze into Dad hugs.  Pepper to ask questions from her world of imagination, "Do elephants use their trunks like a telescope when they swim under water?"  Pepper to remind us to read books and to slow down.

Beckam

Beckam to marvel at the strength of his noggin.  Beckam for being stout and studly.  Beckam for his red hair and for looking just like Grandpa Andy.  Beckam to snuggle the tags of his tattered blankie.  Beckam to bop his head to a music beat in the back seat.  Beckam to bring us all together, and sew up our family tight.



Thank you husband.  For being exactly what you are.

Blind spots

The Golden moment - 60" x 48" acrylic 

Back sore like a set of old scaffolding threatening to collapse.  Every morning I wake up with aching muscles.  I can always find my age somewhere, in the arch of my foot, the small of my back, the ridges along my waist or bolting up the front of my thighs.  It used to be I could run everyday and experience no pain.  I could climb rocks in the desert from sun to sun and not ache.  Now I am always aware of my deficiency.  And once again, I am having the experience of "Those old people knew what they were talking about."

I am not fresh anymore.  I am not invincible.  I am not immuned to the rigors of time.
Yet, I always think I was "better" in the past, and this is not true.  I imagine I was more free, strong, honest, creative...so I look to my old journals, and I find that I have been doing basically the same thing all along.

This one's from 2005.  The year I quit drinking.

 Degeneration of sunflower 60"x 48" acrylic  2008

"Talking about writing as artists and dreamers do.  
In our flip-flops
 in our lounging
 in our thick-rimmed glasses
 in our apathetic shaggy hair
 in our youth
 in our uncertainty
 in our sickness
 in our hope.

barely able to breath through the cloth of our pretense we are all eager to try.
It is so satisfying to put it out there - all that we know.

And  I jump right in 
wagging my tail, tongue sloppy, eyes darting for the next bone."

6/2001

These are the sunflower series I painted in school

"Last night I was haunted by my artwork.  Every painting seemed to be alive and so desperate. Each one had been intended for the answer, but instead became just another beautiful expression of something so much smaller.  Ironically the sadness was in the beauty.  You would think that was the whole point, to create something beautiful.  But that's only part of it.  It is to create something which reflects the madness I feel. To stop it in it's tracks long enough, and completely enough that I can look at it and find peace.  So that I can know it has some sense.  It is real, and not merely circumstance or pre-programmed feeling.  That's why I'm in such a hurry."

I suppose there will always be some sense of inadequacy.  Maybe I will always know that the perfect expression is impossible.  Because I have blind spots.  But what a shame it would be, if I let this keep me from trying to express what I do see.

Owning Orange

So, I've been invited to write for this blog called: owningpink
Trouble is:  I haven't been writing.
I go onto the site and it's all about the transformative power of telling your own story.
It says if I can teach what I know, to even a handful of people, I will be amazed.
And I am.
I know.
This last year of writing Chrysalisbreak has brought me to tears on so many mornings.
It made me hear my Sarah voice again.  The one I never doubted as a young girl.  She is the one who has always known where home is.  The one who wrote pure poetry at the age of 11 and never stopped.
But I undervalue her still.
Because it is still easier to have no needs.
My writing has stopped because I have stopped valuing her - me- whatever.
And now I'm crying again.  It happens so subtly, like falling out of love.
I don't understand these airbrushed photos of women who always have time to wash their hair....and blow-dry it.
I don't understand their struggle and how they turned it into money.
I don't understand how I would ever fit.
I don't know that I want to.

looks simple right?

Because women who are sick don't believe women who are well.
At least not that well.
Not well enough to be on Oprah.

But I started out this whole thing because I realize I will never be "fixed."
There is nothing to fix. I wanted to help people like me, if I could.  I thought, "At least we won't be alone, and maybe we could have less shame.  Maybe I will learn something."
Apparently, I was not the first one to have this thought.  People are making money with this idea all over the internet.
They're called life coaches, and they are replacing God.  Or maybe they're just supposed to be the conduit, I don't know.

Last weekend I sat in my kitchen with a good friend picking at my salad.
Not eating it.
"I don't know,"  I trickled, "I've never known this version of myself.  I'm afraid I will look back and realize that I was asleep.  That I should've been more passionate or that I mistook slumber for peace.  Maybe I just feel quiet because actually I am asleep......I probably am."

But if I'm writing.  I know I'm not asleep.  It flows like water, even if it has to find the one crack left, it will come out.  And by "it" I mean the truth.  I know it because I cry and I find myself writing things I never would have known were there.

What is there now?
I am afraid I will be absorbed by my husband and my kids.
I'm afraid I already am.

Yesterday I went climbing and remembered what I am capable of.
I realized, I am not 20.  I realize it even more today.  I walk like an arthritic woman up the stairs.  I have to gather my breath when I pick up a kid, and I make a funny face like I've just sucked on an atomic fireball jawbreaker.
My thighs ache.  My ass aches.  My lats ache.  My abs ache.
I felt fear.  I dragged my kids through the dirt.  I carried two toddlers up and down mountains.
I climbed a crack that kicked my ass 12 years ago, and it did it again...but not quite as bad.
It was me - it was Sarah - doing all that.  Sarah whose hair turns to fire in the sun.

I watched 10 year-old Sophie climb a 5.10a crack.  She never voiced fear.  She was a tiny woman in her taut calves and the arms of her father.
The trail up to the climb  is the same one I hiked 11 years ago when I was in labor with her.
I called my Aunt from the top,
"I think I'm in labor."
"Where are you?"
"Up in the canyon rock climbing."
"Why are you in the mountains if you're in labor!?  Get down and go to the hospital!"
"It's not that bad yet.  I'll go down soon..."

I can withstand so much, but not stagnation.  It will kill me faster than anything.

Sophie took this picture of me, and I didn't know it.  So I guess it's pretty accurate.