Earth Day 2021 and my girl is digging through this blog to make her 8th grade yearbook page.  And I realize it's been years since I've written.  So Jeff figures out how to sign me in again and here I am again.  Making memories.  

lulu bird

Jeff is crying.  This isn’t something he does often:

I want the snow to melt.  I want the snow to melt her tracks.  I don’t want to be in this house.

I’d rather hang with the magpie, fat on the deck, lurking and shrill, the dog heavy and precious in her last days.  I’d rather sift.  Inhabit hair mottled, lids heavy.  Is today the day we ask?

Then carry on.  She’s an after-thought on our to-do.  She’s a piece of us dead so long.

She first left the July evening the girl came.  Bri brought her to the Birth Center with a pizza, she sniffed the red sleigh bed then cruised through the French doors.  That was before she decided she could no longer walk, muscles frozen with envy, masses building along her belly. 

She’s going into the yard to die! he said on the phone so many years ago with the 24 hour vet. 

I felt my distain rising, our separation almost inevitable.  I held the girl, cradled her to my breast, knew there was no one else in this world, ever.

When the dog didn’t die and the vets couldn’t solve the case, husband found the doggie acupuncturist.  She watched me do the baby sway, a tiny girl in a sling across my chest.  She watched my anxious husband and his still and focused view of the dog; the baby still a distance, a stranger.

He hurls snow off the deck.  I can’t be inside, he says.  I just can’t be in this house.

PTSD she proclaimed.

Your dog can’t handle the baby.

Sure enough when Eliana began to eat bits of banana and avocado, chunks of sweet potato and the famed rice cereal dripped from walls, from cuffs, Lucy healed.  She lapped the detritus.  She focused on benefits.

Fifteen years later, I return from a hike, girl awry. 

She’s not okay, mama.  We might need to put her down before her pills run out.

She’s been number one on the case as of late.  Eliana does all things Lucy:  feeds her, makes sure she gets her pills, makes sure she drinks water.  I have stepped away.  It’s like I don’t have the bandwidth.  I am so embarrassed and ashamed that I couldn’t love more. 

At a crossroads, we ordered one more bottle of painkillers.  For years our friends have remarked on her decay.  We’ve been telling neighbors, beloved house sitters – are you okay if she goes in your care?

This time around we know it will be too much.  Too much for any of us.  Her days are quite literally numbered.  In our hazy and exhausted moments, we break it down.  In our real day race, we feed and pet and deny – there’s too much going on to go there.

She stumbles like a drunk, a cripple, a peg legged lady pirate all washed up glamor and matted sheen, tries to find the stairs but instead walks into walls.  Her cry isn’t in my frequency, especially in the middle of the night but husband hears, wears the armor of midnight warrior, brings her water and pills, stays with her till she sleeps.

My doctor friend reminds me that she can’t advocate for her death, can’t describe the caverns of her pain.

Are we gonna burn Lucy? asks the boy.

Shhh, says husband.  She can still hear us.

It’s the first real snow and the heavy wet streets make me feel drugged and dizzy.  The kids more between silly chatter and sad silence as we drive across town to the vet’s office.

To me, she’s all crystal and stalagmite.  She’s hoar frost in winter, sun all the time, the life that sparked my animal self.  She is open space and deep gully’s and winter booties to protect her paws in the deepest cold, circles of pleasure around the Balsamroot in spring.   She is the backcountry before I even grasped the concept, the freedom of trails upon trails of nothing but earth and sky, creeks and stones.

She was our first taste of family, that one small thing we were actually in charge of.  I remember how she would leap and bark whenever I turned around at the top of Jumbo.  When I was way pregnant with Eliana, Jo and I were up there together.  Lucy began her crazed circle runs, her jumps fierce and playful on my giant belly.  Jo grabbed her collar, shouted, NO, looked me in the eyes.  You’ll never let her get away with that once you have that baby.  The dog is going to be an afterthought.  A nuisance.

My wise and blunt friend was right. Our fulcrum shifted.  So many years passed until it was daughter who tended her best at the end.  Somehow a long the journey, my energy began to wane.  There was only so much to hold and distribute, organize and create, share and love.  Can I admit this?  That I couldn’t love enough?

She is final weeks, final days.  I hold her wisdom in the age spots that appear overnight, the creases in forehead and sulk of skin.  I see it everywhere – the way we surrender and uplift, the way we settle and hold on, determined with now. 

Ten Years

Ten years ago, our world cracked wide open.  Lightning struck the sky, heat moved from the dry earth, rain fell.  We knew right when the day began that we would finally meet you.  The summer day was spent doing summer day things -- a slow stroll in the park, a soak in the creek -- until it wasn't -- contractions and laps around the Birth Center, bracing myself on posts and tree trunks waiting for another to pass.  I will say though, that I was never scared.  I was so ready to meet you.  You blew our world open, flew from my body, no need to push, no need to do much beyond listen to what you were saying.  You've always known.  You've always known so much. 

Even today, the must anticipated day, you were thoughtful.  You were quiet.  You biked with dad and hiked with us, rode the chairlift and spotted Indian Paintbrush, picked huckleberries, but you were a bit beyond us.  Reflective in that quiet way.   Reflective and perfect.

Birthdays are hard.  They are full of expectation, anticipation, energy.  They're loaded in that magical, mystical way.  And we went big.  The girls splashed in the pool and you rode down the tubes, landing in the river of humans, all ten year old confidence and we've-got-this.  You hosted your first sleepover, did your nails, played with my make-up, had a pillow fight.  I'm not sure how many of these ideas came from you, but you roll with it, because that's who you are. 

Who else are you?  You are brave.  So brave.  You love the earth.  You love to sing.  You are music and show tunes and heartfelt harmonies.  You are ocean waves, consistent, clear, unpredictable.  You are so very, very kind.  Your empathy and intuition come from deep within and separate you from others your age.  I think that's why that sleepover was such a doozy.  Just a bit too much immersion in everyone else's junk. 

You are so loyal.  You take care of your brother to no end.  You love your dada and keep up with him outside.  And you love me.  You love our quiet times.  You love our special dates.  You love how connected we are. 

And we love you.  Your dimples and curls.  Your honesty and devotion.  Your absolute beauty that shines through and around and within you always.

Soli is 7

On the eve of his seventh birthday

His face slides across the road,
Anything to keep his dad from
Making another basket,
Eye, cheek, chin now red and swollen.
I hold the ice pack in place,
Hold his long body in the bed,
Back to chest.
We've always meant to go together-
His kind kind eyes and wild hair,
The way he races to find his buddies after school,
Takes another too steep hill on his bike,
Flips over the handlebars.
That was just a few days ago.
His knees are raw on raw.
Thank god for helmets,
Cortisone cream, bandaids.
Thank god for fierce loyalty,
For fighting hard and loving harder.
How I adore him with a ferocity,
With an acceptance
Of all I don't totally grasp,
His boy wild,
His fearless warrior of rad.

staycation

This is the winter I choose to embrace snow.  Ice.  Pockets of blue that arrive like grace from the clouds.  Red berries left on the Mountain Ash.  The way my skis glide up the trail and the view of the frozen creek.  Sulfuric waters that rise from the earth.  Small Montana towns with one quirky bakery and a cowboy bar.  Yellowstone and her bison, her geysers, the way they make the earth smell sulfuric and wild.  Hotel rooms and sharing space and sleeping in and moving slow.  The way the pockets of blue guide me through each day, living for them, for the light, for the moments of grace. 

in's, out's, and so many special days

I found this in my drafts -- I guess it never published.  For the sake of the archive, I'm doing a little spring Soli shout out in October...

Soli turned six on Tuesday.  Six.  I can't really believe this even happened.  And just like that, he's huge.  He plays with his buds in the hood for hours, battles and legos and trucks and soccer.  He had a huge party at the park and blew around in a pack of little ragamuffins, all slicky short glory.  He's radical. 

April was a heck of a month.  I was further geographically removed from my kiddos than ever before, gone for two weeks for work.  While I traveled to places exotic and exciting, I definitely left a big part of myself at home.  I am attached to my home.  My home and the people who live here.

Today is Mother's Day and while there is so much more to say, what I'm feeling tonight is absolute grace.  Today I did not want to leave my deck, the view of the green mountains, the sounds of my kiddos moving this way and that, my husband tidying up, chatting.  I waited for some burst of energy, some need to do things totally for me, to leave them and do yoga, meet a friend for a latte, a hike, whatever, but I really had no interest.  I wanted to be with them.  They did the hike with me.  We did our thing, enjoyed our hills and the balsamroot, our music and our odd ways.