twirl and swirl

The integration continues.  Spring is here.  Spring in this mountain town means an explosion of color and scent and light.  Within days, the intense sunshine yields soggy green buds, electric lawns, hillsides sprinkled with larkspur and shooting stars.  I love this place.  I love this life, these seasons, this circle.  I love the first sip of my perfect cup of coffee.  I love the first sight of my children when they wake in the morning.  Or, more honest, more lately, when they awake at any god given hour of the middle of the night.  Sol's monkey snuggle.  Eliana's hot breath and intensity.  How innocent and simple it all is when she's groggy.  I love the challenge to stay present through all the absurd and gorgeous details of a day.  The search for a pair of socks that match, Tupperware lids, car keys.  The insights and love from the kids I teach.  A short break from work that finds me walking Lu in the park.  The river races, signs warn of flood damage.  Green all around.  Overnight.  Quite literally.  Overnight.  It takes my breath away.

Tonight I find myself here alone.  I'm listening to Brandon sing, feeling his intensity meld with the shifting clouds, the fat raindrops that pour through the sunshine.  In a few weeks I will go back to LA for my twenty year high school reunion.  Between now and then, Solomon will turn two.  My current life and my past life will continue to do their little swirly life dance, their all-is-beautiful-in-its-complexity routine.

I've been reconnecting with my Osho Zen Tarot deck.  I actually had a really intense afternoon with it the day Brandon died.  Before I knew he died.  But that's another story.

So I don't really believe in this stuff, but I do believe in this deck because it's magic.  It just is.  It's never let me down.

So I keep getting this same card.  The same card!  It's called New Vision and it's all about embracing the dark and the light.  All about the Integration.  If I weren't so tired, I'd get up from my chair and grab the book and quote it.  But my feet have served me so darn well today.  And now they just want to stay up.

My son turns two.  It feels so right.  They are so damn hilarious.  Tonight they were singing a duet of, "A Whole New World" in the bath.  Just like Brandon and Anna, the ridiculously bad recording that my sister made during a school assembly and sent to me up in college.  The tape I'd listen to as I'd log mile after mile on the stinky stationary bike, my body trying to beat out heartbreak.

So there are my kids, so appropriately singing the same song.  Eliana would just belt it our while Soli would get the longer notes, the "eeeerld!" of "world".  He'd punch the volume just to be sure we knew he was really into it, even though he can't string that many words together.  They were so hyped up in that overly exhausted way tonight. 

Jumping naked on the bed and tackling each other like wild monkeys.  I finally got them in bed and came out to eat my potstickers.  I love potstickers.  I used my body a ton tonight teaching my yoga class and was way into my cabbage salad and soft dumplings.  I'm mildly obsessed with raw cabbage.   Anyway.

So my hearings been extra bad lately.  I had a bad case of swimmer's ear that I had cleaned up at the doctor's the other day.  After he pulled out a few huge balls of black nast, I could hear a major difference.  That said, I still feel like things are muffled and strange.  I think it's my hearing aide, but I don't want to admit it because my warranty has expired.

Back to dinner.  I am finally sitting in the quiet space of my kitchen, all alone, all calm, all perfect bites and attention to detail when I begin to hear strange sounds coming from the kids' room.  I figure it's Eliana being bad and out of bed, and wait for her to come and ask for another glass of almond milk.  But she never comes.  I finish my food and move to the computer to go into my weird, private (yet public and right here on this blog) world of processing.  More strange sounds coming from the room.  I know it's Elie and imagine she's just messing around.  I don't want to go in as I might wake Sol.  I assume she's fine.

The strangest sounds!  So I open the door.  And there is my little guy, all innocent and rebellious, looking up at me with his bedroom eyes.  I guess he can get in and out of his crib now without a flesh wound.  Super.

He was playing with Eliana's accessories.  He had little rubber bands up his arm like Madonna in Borderline.  I scooped him up and took him in for the cuddle of a lifetime.  I wish I liked the word cuddle more.  The double d's have always bugged me.  For the hold of a lifetime.  I could kiss that head forever.  Touch those cheeks.  Rub the sleepy curls that are finally appearing on his formerly barren head. 

There's something about thinking about Mother's Day after emailing your dead friend's mom while listening to your dead friend's music to then inhaling your own child that makes for a mildly intense evening.  New Vision! reads the card.  I think I have to go get it. 

...Now you are presented with an opportunity to see life in all its dimensions, from the depths to the heights.  They exist together, and when we come to know from experience that the dark and the difficult are needed as much as the light and easy, then we begin to have a very different perspective on the world.  By allowing all of life's colors to penetrate us, we become more integrated.

I'm so with this card.  They do indeed exist together, those depths and heights.  I feel so full of grace right now.  I'm so in love with my husband.  So appreciative of how he loves our kids, loves me, works to bring his best self to the world each day.  Feel so connected to my parents and in-laws.  The elders in my world with their quirky, heart-felt goodness.  My children are other worldly in their equal parts brilliance and frustration.  Eliana and I are at one moment the picture of mother-daughter perfection to just as quickly  caught in another struggle about something unimportant and absurd.  Her headband snaps and it's all my fault.  Even though I told her not to wear it around her waist.  But she insisted.  Until.  Snap.  And I didn't even say I told you so. 

 

What is so healing and sacred about sitting and typing on a computer?  Tomorrow I get to have dinner with my girlfriend who will any day have her second child.  I remember life before kids as so simple.  I remember life with just one kid as pretty simple.  After Soli came, simplicity left my vocabulary.  Simple was replaced with tremendous.  Overwhelming.  Beautiful.  Exhausting.  Amazing.  I've been in that space ever since.  My new vision.