Heart In A Box

August 18th, 4:36 PM. A few clouds, silvery light limns me as I write. I quite like it.

"Ten thousand words swarm around my head
Ten million more in books written beneath my bed
I wrote or read them all when searchin' in the swarms
Still can't find out how to hold my hands"

The music player surprised me with the Avett Brothers somehow knowing my heart ahead of time, they could foresee the future years ago, they must have. How else could they have known I would be delving into a box full of memories, heartaches and love this silvery-gray afternoon? My heart contracted and my throat tightened around a bolus of emotions, rough but not entirely unwelcome.

I was searching for photos. More specifically, CD's with photo files or a flash drive containing the same. I've been thinking about my twins lately, and I wanted to find the pictures I had taken when they were still in the NICU. Scoured my computer, the external drive, no luck so far. I thought that perhaps I had copied them off. I hope I did.

So it was a riffling through my desk, ransacking my briefcase, checking some shelves. I was avoiding the large box of mementos I had packed in my last move, but with no luck finding the right discs I knew I would have to open it.

It was among the very last boxes I sealed before moving. As I cleaned up my old house, I kept discovering the odd bit of physical memory, things I didn't want to discard, or couldn't discard. You know how it is when you move things that have been in the same place for long periods of time. Layers and strata develop. Chunks of memory form under the compaction of more stuff and time. Photos. Kids' drawings. Notes and cards and letters. Knick-knacks and curios. I had more than I remembered.

They all went in the box so I wouldn't lose them. The box itself had been set aside in a corner, resting there in the months since I moved. It was with some hesitation that I slid the knife through the tape holding the box shut. There was pressure, in my head and heart. I was hoping it wouldn't explode.

The Avett Brothers began to croon, the box opens, and into my hands fell shards of memory and love. I clutched to my chest artifacts from two pasts, one that will only be a future in my mind, and one of a future still developing. A small blanket, a picture or two of my son and daughter in the isolettes, drawings by my lovely Wee Lass, small crayon pictures scrawled with "I Love You Dad" in letters etched deep in the stone of my heart. Bits and pieces of my past youth and my Big Bro, all tucked away into 1.5 cubic feet.

The pressure in the box blew these fragile papers and relics up in a cloud, the words and images swarming around my head as I frantically scooped them up to contain them all. The world swam and blurred, liquid diamonds diffracting in my eyes. The papers, the pages, these miniature stelae forming the library of my history. Books beneath my bed? Jesus H., how did they know that? 

I never did find the discs for which I was looking. As I placed the things back in the box, they came to me as more books on the shelf. Books I am reading and still writing, because I know no other path to follow.

The box filled, I closed the flaps and pushed it away to another corner. Sitting there in the chair, I looked down at my trembling fingers. I clenched them, feeling small and sad knowing that, in some sense, I still can't find out how to hold my hands.

--
Lyrics from "Ten Thousand Words", by the Avett Brothers.

From Little Acorns

Hard to fathom how nine years can fold itself into the span of a few seconds, but it happens. I looked out the window into the sunlight peeking through the clouds and the hands of my first son and daughter wrapped themselves around my heart. It is a testament to the changes in me since 2003 that I did not cry to feel the pressure. I only lowered my head while coming to grips with what I knew was on the way. It's their birthday, the day that growing up and being a man were no longer optional.

They came into our lives in a fire drill of life, under duress and much too early for anyone. They had no choice, and neither did we. It was a terrifying, awesome spectacle that I believe no one wants to witness, but having gone through it I cannot deny the effect the whole delivery process had on me. There will be no forgetting the urgency of the operation. There will be no unseeing of the blood and the machines, the focus of so many to preserve the lives of two tiny babies.

Small, delicate, and ultimately too fragile, yet they made a man out of me. More precisely, they made a new man out of me, by bringing me face to face with the evolution I had long postponed. Our babies made me grow up. Fast.

What to say to them, on this day upon which they would have been nine years old? What can I tell them? What can I give to them, to their memories?

As parents many of us may want to believe that our children will be our legacy, and for many that is true. For me through them, however, it is not. At least as long as I am on this earth, the man that I became is destined to be their legacy.

My children shaped me, forged me, poured me into a new mold. If on this their birthday I do weep it will not be tears of anguish at their loss, it will be tears of joy. I will celebrate the day they came into the world and bestowed upon me the honor of being their father.

Nine years, my children. I have your memory in my mind and your love in my heart. Happy birthday, son and daughter. You are no longer of this earth, but you are loved.

Light Reading

A tribunal of candles sits atop the dresser, pale golden dancers washing the plaster walls with delicate light.  Their warmth, even in summer, a welcome addition and delight for the mind's palate.  Behind them to the left, tucked in the corner sits a small stack of books.  Journals, the handwritten relics excavated from a mind in search of its anchors.  The books glow in the light.

Shadows cling to the journals.  Profiles writ large on the wall behind them.  The pages themselves are orderly, but sport encrustations of tabs and sticky notes like bibliographic barnacles on bookish pilings.  The notes are but placeholders marking words, sentences, paragraphs that at some point in the past were deemed significant enough to warrant commemoration.  But in the now, they fringe of notes seems a reminder of thoughts unfinished, of tasks incomplete.  They have their own nostalgia.

The candle flames waver subtly in near undetectable currents in the close air of the room.  For a split-second it may have created the impression that ghosts walk in this room.  The notion does not seem so far-fetched.  After all, the journals tell true stories about bearing witness to spirits that were not for this world.  The tomes contain passages describing what it is like to have traveled out of the body and brought back sights and sounds and memories of love and pain from the other side of the astral glass.

The shadows dance gracefully around the journals.  They shimmy with a sensuality all their own.  Contemplating them thusly it is not outside of the realm of possibility that the shadows themselves are their own stories.  New tales from the heart whispered softly and with deep respect for the past from which they grew.  It is the candles that have brought out this quality, this idea of stories as entities existing in light.  The eye watches the flames move.  The mind considers the physics and optics involved.  The heart follows the shadows and calls out for a new epic of love, to be written in the edges between light and dark

The Poles of Life and Death

It is probably my favorite jacket, dark blue cotton with a leather collar.  I've had it for ten (?) years at least, I think.  It is a little threadbare on the cuffs, but has the look of something well-made and wearing well.  I had this jacket when my twins were born so long ago; it carries memories just as I do.

On the left lapel of the jacket there are two ribbons.  It is a duo of small satin curios, each one made of pink and blue fabric intertwined.  A small safety pin in each assumes the fastening duties.  Each ribbon is also getting frayed, the result of years of me wearing them.  I picked them up at an annual memorial walk, given each year in honor of children who have died.  It is a way for the parents and families to remember the little ones.  Each year they have ribbons available, and I have yet to take mine off.

A co-worker of mine asked me about them today.  This is the first time anyone has asked in months, if not a couple of years.  My co-worker didn't know my story yet, and I think it was deeper than he was expecting.  It is a testament to how far I have come that I can now answer that question evenly and with peace instead of grief.  I find it less draining to tell the story, and I am grateful for the chance to share.  It was also a perfect segue into talking about my lovely daughter, too, and she is a welcome topic of conversation.

On the drive home, I was musing on all that had transpired.  It occurred to me that I don't need a ribbon for my daughter, because obviously I have her, in the world here and now.  For the twins, the ribbons are what I have, at least in a form I can easily carry around with me.  I have a person and I have symbols: all to be treasured for all the hours of my days.

Rolling down the highway, under a hammered-pewter sky,  I felt myself in a delicate state of tension.  It wasn't a stressful feeling wrought with anxiety.  I fancied it to be that which a finely-tuned piano wire feels as it is stretched out in the instrument.  Taut, sleek and brimming with potential.  I found myself in a new, bright country of the soul.

I was caught between the poles of Life and Death, balancing ever so carefully in anticipation of that decisive moment when I am struck just so, to vibrate with Beauty.

Moons of Jupiter, So Close...

It was G-maw that made me want to be an astronaut. Not a "Going to the moon" type astronaut, mind you, I mean a full on balls-to-the-wall (or balls-to-the-bulkhead) strapped to God's own bottle rocket, out past the orbit of the Earth around the Sun kind of astronaut. I wanted to fly to Jupiter and poke it in the Great Red Spot. All because G-maw had a telescope...

I have a telescope myself. A new one, it was a gift. I asked for it because I used to have one when I was a younger Gumbo, but that one didn't survive my jaunt to college and subsequent moves from the nest to apartments to a house. My old one was a refractor, my new one is a reflector. Appropriate, because mainly that what it does and makes me do: reflect.

Which I do. A lot. It was about two weeks ago that I came home from work under a clear sky the color of bruises and wine, to notice a big, bright dot hanging out on the southerly side. I watched it as I sidled up the sidewalk to my back door. It didn't blink and neither did I. I recalled that it must be Jupiter, and that unlocked a flood of memories. I stood on the patio, hand on the doorknob, for a good ten minutes watching that golden speck. All the while images cascaded in sheets across my mind: National Geographic, G-maw and me, freezing nights outside all mixed up with blinking lights, dim lit rooms at night and the faint beep of machines keeping my hearts alive while I frantically scribbled in a notebook.

The Voyager probes flew past Jupiter in 1979, and the pictures they sent back were mental manna to an astronomy geek like me. G-maw had a subscription to National Geographic, which had some awesome spreads of Jupiter and a few of the moons. I remember seeing the Great Red Spot (and feeling awe) and volcanoes on Io (and being freaked out: sulfur dioxide "lava"!) and thinking Man, it would be awesome to go there. I had this fantasy of flying in a space capsule, me the Heroic Traveler, and planting a flag on Io under the glare of the Red Spot. I suppose the far-away alienness of the place seemed perfect for the shy loner that I was: better with things than with people. The cold, the dark and the distance didn't bother me. It only made me want to go there even more, to see awesome beauty and wondrous things never before touched by man, maybe only by the hands of God.

I shook my head and went inside. The telescope is just inside the door. I kept glancing at as I ate dinner, and decided to take it outside and try to see the moons of Jupiter. It was while trying to focus on the little bright dot, that the mystery crept in again. I looked up to see with my eyes and not the lens, and found myself on the frozen face of Io, staring into the glare of the angry red spot while tears streamed down my face. Epithets and insults rang deafeningly inside suit helmet as I violently waved my arms and screamed that this wasn't fair and no, you can't do this, no, no, no you can't bring me this far and show me so much great beauty and tell me its mineminemine only to take it away in a violent storm of desperate nights. NONONO it can't be not after all the blood and the tears and the needles and machines, constantly pricked in the heels and tubes shoved down their throats with diapers the size of a cocktail napkin and you even let me touch them, caress their fragile skin crinkling under the glare of the jaundice lamp you let me say daddy is here, my babies and he thinks you are the most beautiful things in the Universe...

...and the bubble popped, I came back to earth with a lump in my throat and images of tiny moons in my hands, fading with a burn as the cold black well of Night drained them of their lives. I had endured a long, hard trek to a place of indescribable pain and exquisite beauty. Seeing my son and daughter there in the NICU, I planted my flag on frozen ground and watched them fade into howling wilderness of an indifferent Universe. 

Watching the little golden light slowly descend to the horizon, I could not help but think that I had indeed been to the moons of Jupiter. It was a shock and a gift, to travel so far expecting rock and ice, and instead finding flesh and blood...and my heart.

On The Ocean Voracious, Epilogue

It was the screech of a seagull, perhaps, that awoke me. A high, thin keening that set my nerves on edge and had me gritting my teeth.

Grit was in my mouth. The banalities of everyday life intruding in the form of phone calls, bathing, eating. All the simple actions we take for granted when there is no crisis to confront. Simple they may be, but akin to mountain climbing while schlepping a sixty-pound backpack. Scuba diving in gelatin. Pushing frozen molasses with a snow shovel.

Blackstrap molasses, at that, so it fails to even offer the warm comfort of an oatmeal cookie.

My eyes fluttered open into the stinging kiss of a stiff salt breeze. Sand crusted my face, which was mashed into the cold shingle of the beach. A few feet away stood a feathery blur which slowly resolved itself as an enormous glaucous gull, standing guard over the beat-up carcass of a codfish. The gull shifted from one foot to the other as I slowly raised myself up on my trembling arms. The pungent reek of the deliquescing fish assaulted my nostrils. My aching belly heaved, and I vomited memories, hot, bitter, acid.

Days, months, years of anger and sadness spilled out onto the bright sand. The sun sparkled on the slick of sickness like filthy rubies and emeralds; gems made obscene by years buried in the muck and slime of my ravaged psyche. The stench was unbearable and triggered another torrent of spew which seemed to last for days. I feebly scrabbled backwards to get away from the toxic waste lying on the beach. The sand rasped my hands and knees, growing damp as I neared the tide line, toes tangling in the clammy rubber of decaying seaweed. The heavy seas of my heaving insides slowly settled down as if sprayed with crude oil. I leaned back on my heels and spat to rid my mouth of the taste of steel wool and quinine. The world was condensing into a familiar shape as I closed my eyes, rocking gently in the saline breeze.

Days later, tears seeping down my salt-crusted cheeks, I opened my eyes. The seagull was still there. peering at me with what could only be termed professional disinterest. A cock of the head, and it casually bent down to peck at the codfish melting into the sand. The sulfur-colored bill held something red and stringy, which quickly disappeared into the bird’s gullet. The gull screeched at me, a glasscutter blade on a cosmic windowpane. I shivered.

It was cold in the wind, but the sun behind scudding clouds offered some small warmth. My body and my mind ached with the fading pain of having run beyond my limits. Gingerly I flexed my arms and hands, rolled my head about my neck, and made to stand.

A fortnight later and I was on my feet. Now that the pain had faded somewhat, I took stock of my surroundings. The gull was gone, leaving the pathetic outline of codfish bones under a thin layer of sand. I averted my eyes from the evidence of my illness, focusing instead on the granite boulders that marched themselves up the beach to melt into a dense forest of slatey-green trees. Pine, fir or cedar I could not tell but the herbal sweetness of conifer sap coiled into my flaring nostrils as the wind blew gently offshore. I breathed deep and relaxed, ever so little. Gazing into the forest, unblinking for what seemed days, I realized that the only way out of the prison of my tragedies was to venture inland. There could be no going back to the sea. Not now.

Tragedy notwithstanding, I felt I could not truly abandon the waters that brought me here. Survival so hard fought, I had come to respect that which used to be a mortal enemy. I turned to face the liquid jade vastness that had spat me upon this not so alien shore.

There was no trace of the vessel I had once sailed upon this troubled ocean, and I was not so foolish as to expect it. The sky overhead was shocking cerulean, pocked by clouds of icy white and steely grey. Their etherealness congealed into a dense grey smear that seemed little different from the water, out on the far horizon. The sea and sky along the curve of the earth stirred slowly, a darkly grey serpent portending storms and heartache to come. Perhaps they would find me, perhaps not; for now I was on dry ground with little reserve to fight against that which had not yet come to pass. I turned on my heels, trudging slowly but steadily up to the trees.

Behind me, the glass shards and tumbled gravel of a million heartbreaks rolls back and forth in the ceaseless play of surf. Water mutters and hisses over the shingle, the voices of my beloved urge me forward into the balsam green breeze, and my chest grows warm as the splintered remains of my heart begin to stitch themselves anew.

On The Ocean Voracious, Part Three

For a few degrees of arc, I thought my back was broken.

The pressure of the waves had driven me backwards, hard into the mast. The water was cold liquid lead, filling my lungs as I struggled to free myself from its grip. The howl of the wind was now lost to the gurgling shouts of the ocean. I was drowning and there was nothing, nothing I could do about it.

My limbs were cold and numb. I lay in the dark, freezing and unmoving. Unmoving of any impulse from me, mind you. The matrix in which I was embedded refused to stay still. Any motion of my limbs was purely the result of external forces. I was unsure if I had been caught in an explosion or an implosion; the net result was devastation. My eyes did not want to stay open. It hurt to look and see a tiny person-shaped void where my daughter had lain.

Nurses, family, and my son…the constellations by which I managed to navigate once I could keep my eyes open. I could see the stars occasionally through gaps in the clouds as I clung unsteadily to the mast, rocked violently by the heaving seas. Having a fixed point is of great comfort to those racked by seasickness; so it was with me. My eyes clung to this human horizon as it was the only source of strength for miles around on this desert ocean.

Her funeral another violent tempest.

If not for my journals, I’d likely not recall much of the experience. A small, precious life is gone and we are discussing music. And how to write a eulogy for a life of six days? I sat down to write, and got up from the table when I was done; the thing itself I only know from having saved a copy.

If tears had been rain, the desert of my soul would have been covered in green. The door to the hearse opened, and I wrapped my arms around her spirit resting in a box much too small to contain it. The walk to the gravesite was a long trip between points side by side. How could my arms ache so much from a burden so slight? I knelt to set my daughter down and tumbled over the gunwale into a sea the color of molten coal. Blind and unthinking, I clung to my son the life raft. He was all we had, on this violent waterscape. The source of life, light and heat. I wrapped myself around him and prayed in a fever that he, that we would free ourselves from this maelstrom. Every minute, every hour that passed was another step closer to shore. I nurtured the hope, like a tea candle in a hurricane lamp, that our son would come home with us.

I was swimming as hard as I could, pushing clawing my way to the light and the entire time I didn’t see the walls of the whirlpool growing higher and reaching deeper. A claw reached out of the gelatinous dark and sank into my heaving chest: phone calls in the sodden hours of the early morning. The first to tell us that something serious was going on, the second to tell us to come to the hospital.

If the hours of the dark and the dawn are cruel to you, how can you ever sleep again?

We dressed hurriedly and surfed to the hospital on a syrupy wave of nausea and dread. It was almost impossible to conceive that the same things were happening again. Sailing the same sea, foundering on the same rocks, sinking into the same depths. The only difference was this time it was by the light of day. Horrors do not lessen under the glare of the sun. They only become easier to see. The staff gave us the terrible, terrible news: our son was in a very bad state.

Pitchpoling. The nautical term for causing to flip end over end. The bow gets buried in the back of the wave in front of it, and over it goes the stern. Pitchpoled. We sat there on the couch in the NICU as they told us that our son was not going to make it, and I could not stop tumbling. The lights swirled over and around and I heard someone saying “No, no, no, this can’t be” and I realized with a start that it was me. My stern was in the air and I was choking on the water. I clung to the hope that they were wrong, but to no avail. The waves got higher, the wind howled faster. I walked to the phone to call my parents with the bad news. Another long walk into a bottomless pit, and the sun was not yet over the horizon. We waited, we prayed, but the ocean refused to listen. At about half past noon, on an otherwise ordinary day, the sun went out as if flicked by a switch: we had to turn off the machines.

The life raft disappeared as if it had never been. I felt myself lifted up high by a cold upwelling from the sludge at the bottom of the sea. My head barely above the waterline, I found myself at the top of a tsunami and looking down at a rapidly approaching shoreline of broken stone. My son breathed his last; the tsunami broke and I smashed headlong into the rocks, not caring if I awoke.

St. Brendan was willing to risk his life sailing into the unknown, for the sake of the Promised Land, so I suppose for him dealing with monsters and other horrors was the cost of doing business. For me, the accidental sailor, it was a price I was most unwilling to pay. I didn’t want the Promised Land, I wanted a family. I can only hope that Brendan found it worthwhile for what he learned.

But for me, if this is the price of wisdom, I prefer to remain an idiot.

No, Lonesome, No Cry

“… I remember when we used to sit
In the government yard in Trenchtown,
Oba - obaserving the 'ypocrites
As they would mingle with the good people we meet…”
Good friends we have, oh, good friends we've lost
Along the way.
In this great future, you can't forget your past;
So dry your tears, I seh…”

The storm has passed, leaving the sidewalks a muddy gray, and he felt something stir sluggishly in the hollow stone of his chest. His heart, the color and density of the concrete. Off to the west, the sky was beginning to clear, patches of azure silk amongst the dirty cotton of the clouds. It’s too bad, he muttered, that the rain doesn’t make clouds look cleaner. He wondered what could really wash it all away. What base to neutralize the acid of sorrow?

“…Good friends we have, oh, good friends we've lost
Along the way.
In this great future, you can't forget your past;
So dry your tears, I seh…”

The blinds were open halfway, thin bars on the soft prison he called his new home. They rattled whenever the door opened. But he just couldn’t bring himself to ask the maintenance guys for some replacement clips. Funny, that sort of routine repair seemed so uninteresting to him now. A small thing to be ignored, like many small things of tiny import. The sun glowed brighter like a flashlight wrapped in tissue paper. The watery rays gave a pearly sheen to his face and the walls that bounded it. His eyes closed slowly, a sleepy jaguar twitching its ears at the noise buzzing from the radio. Bob Marley unknowingly drives needles into an aching heart.

“...And then Georgie would make the fire lights,
As it was logwood burnin' through the nights.
Then we would cook cornmeal porridge,
Of which I'll share with you;
My feet is my only carriage,
So I've got to push on through…”

Either the world heaved under his feet, or he grew faint, sagging against the door. There was a sharp crack, as the glass in his hand hit the trim along the frame. The dull report sounding as a gunshot in a living room suddenly become anechoic. The walls, the carpet, swallowing up the rasp of his breath and the beats of his heart. He wondered why those noises disappeared, yet he could hear every dog barking, plane flying and bad muffler out in the parking lot. Ah, he thought, it’s all internal.

“…But while I'm gone, I mean:
Everything's gonna be all right!
Everything's gonna be all right!
Everything's gonna be all right!
Everything's gonna be all right!...”

Anything self-generated, he said softly, is bound to disappear. The tree in the forest with no one around. Not even myself to hear it. The glass grew heavy, dragging his arm down as if he were holding a cold, wet cannonball. His thirst increased as wetness gathered at the corners of his eyes. He smiled at the thought that maybe he did not have to raise the glass after all. The cold liquid travelling by stealth through the capillaries of his hand and arm. On the way, something alchemical occurred. The drops from the glass no longer ice-cold and bracing, they emerged hot and molten. Liquid salt slag from the furnace of his heart rolled down his fevered cheeks. The glass he raised to his lips and took a swallow, oddly dainty in his motions. A marriage of quinine and lime coated his mouth and lips with sublime bitterness.

He laughed again, at the thought of tonic. A good thing, he told himself, I need to protect myself from the fever. The grin faded, knowing the fever, this emotional malaria he carried within, would return. The radio droned on, and he found he had no strength to turn it off. He wiped his mouth with the back of his hand, staring out the window into the silvery bowl of the sky.

“…I said, everything's gonna be all right-a!
Everything's gonna be all right!
Everything's gonna be all right, now!
Everything's gonna be all right!...”

He said to no one, I know you mean well, Bob, but…gimme some time to believe you.

Lyrics from “No, Woman, No Cry” by Bob Marley

On The Ocean Voracious, Part Two

Deluge. The wave thunders over the bow to take my breath away. Gasping and spluttering in a frantic attempt to draw air into my lungs, I rushed down the hall to the delivery room. Or was it really an operating room? The distinction perhaps matters not at all. What did matter is that there was pain and blood and panic and a claustrophobic smothering of life out of control. Control for us, not the doctors and nurses doing their best to keep three lives in this world.

As I entered the room, my head full of whitecaps and howling wind, I was led to a chair set next to the head of the table. This was no captain’s chair, commanding the bridge on a clipper ship racing over the open ocean. Instead it had the feel of a life ring or a rescue dinghy. In other words, small, frail and to my overheated mind, distressingly inadequate for the task of keeping me afloat.

I had no choice. I sank into the chair with a prayer to keep me from drowning.

The mother of our twins lay there, dazed by fatigue, medications and anesthesia. She was awake though, and my heart broke to see the look of fear on her face. There is little so emasculating as facing a total inability to help someone you love out of their own extreme distress. What could I do sit by her side, murmuring what words of support that I could muster? To this day, I cannot recall if I held her hand, do not remember if anything I said truly helped. After all, what does the master of the ship say to the crew when they are staring up at a wall of water ten times the size of their own puny craft?

Not much, I suppose. But better to say something, better to acknowledge the human connection, than to completely surrender to the blind brutalities of nature.

I did what I could do, the best I could under the circumstances. The room was filled with choreographed chaos. It had the air of a bizarre religious ceremony, masked acolytes attending to the mysterious commands of high priestesses gathered around a strange and terrible altar. Machines beeped and hummed in the background. Hands were raised, blood was drawn. There seemed a never ending stream of small emergencies to defuse; all the while I sat there trying not to faint. If I felt possessed of manhood at all, I watched it slowly seeping away in a slowly growing pile of surgical gauze colored a shocking crimson. I fought to keep my eyes open.

The doctor spoke. I looked up to see that our son had been delivered. My eyes registered a pinkish blur the size and shape of a doll as he was whisked over to a waiting isolette. Another terse utterance from the doctor as our first daughter was delivered shortly thereafter. Again, I saw a doll-shaped blur. A shout withered in my throat as I learned that the babies were alive, the mother serious but stable.

There were no cries. The silence haunts me still.

St. Brendan was either a madman or possessed of supernatural courage. I, who am not destined to be a saint, certainly doubted my sanity. There were no bronze stars pinned to my shirt. The blur of the delivery faded into the gray-green roar of the sea pummeling my miniscule craft. I stood before the mast soaked and shivering in fear of opening my eyes. As I waited, I felt the motion of the boat began to slow. The wind dropped from a howl to a loud conversation. A dim silvery light seeped through my eyelids. Feeling no courage at all, I opened them to see a break in the clouds on the far horizon. The waters were restless, heavy, and the craft was still tossed. Still, it seemed we had survived the worst. I began to bail the boat.

Bend. Scoop. Stand. Pour. Repeat. A script of long hours, little sleep and constant worry. My wife in the ICU, my babies in the NICU. A seemingly diabolical arrangement designed to stretch and break the body and the soul. You really cannot be two places at once, the errant cruelty of which was ground into my mind. Things began to look up, as the twins stabilized and my wife improved enough to get out of the ICU and visit the babies. The meeting between the babies and the mother was a transcendent moment, a glimpse into the presence of the Divine in the fabric of the Universe. We began to hope, began to breathe more. Mother and father were able to go home. The sea relaxed, ever so slightly.

But on the sixth day, God created Pain.

A white-hot lance of agony delivered in the form of a late evening phone call. The daughter was in distress. We were told to get back to the hospital. I looked up from the bilge, pail in hand, to see the sky and the sea melding into one. A deep gray-green smudge of darkness. The wind began to race.

The drive to the hospital and the trip up to the NICU is a smear of panic and horror. My jaws at war with my guts, as they sought to escape through my lips. We made into the NICU, and the faces of the staff told us what we did not want to know, even before we saw the isolette. We rounded the corner, and the lance twisted hard between the ribs. Our daughter, not breathing, the machines turned off.

On board the boat, a tiny flame is extinguished by a hurricane. The ocean peels itself away from the horizon and wraps the boat; the coils of a ghastly Ouroboros come to crush it to end the world. I howl in despair and fury, unbelieving of such tragedy. As the wave rolls over the boat, the only thing I can think to do is hurl the bucket into its face and damn it to hell. The wave in its uncaring majesty ignores this puny attempt at defiance, and breaks.

On The Ocean Voracious, Part One

Six years I have roamed the ocean, seeking to escape its ravenous maw. Six years I have mourned the loss of the vessel in which I had set sail on the waters of life.

Was I St. Brendan, setting out in my wood and leather coracle in search of Paradise? Not exactly, as I would never confuse myself with a dyed-in-the-wool true believer. And I certainly never founded any monasteries. What I did do, akin to Brendan, was to believe in something so deeply, want something so badly I was willing to journey far through dangerous seas in an improbably small vessel to find it.

So it came to pass that I found myself on the verge of fatherhood, a wife pregnant with twins and a head full of naïve ideas about what fatherhood really meant. The early days were filled with joy and anxiety, but mostly joy. Against some steep odds I was the father of twins, where I had been hoping and praying for at least one child to call ours. I still remember the day we found out. The evidence was right there on the sonogram screen. A fine pair, indeed.

I was so happy I thought I would faint. Or throw up. Fortunately, I did neither. Instead, I started laughing and crying a bit, it was so beautiful and overwhelming. Wishes and dreams coming true in a most unexpected fashion.

Twins. Time to put on my big boy pants.

In the days and weeks following our discovery, I was growing anxious and overjoyed in equal measures. One child would have been a lot to take on, so two…! I was able to put aside the anxiety, mostly, and concentrate on the joy, the excitement. I could see the evidence there, every day, in a swelling tummy and the radiance that only a mother could have. Natural beauty on par with anything Nature could offer.

Plans were made, thinking of life with not one, but two babies in the world. Clothes bought, thoughts of a nursery, scrapbooks to document the growth and arrival of strange and lovely fruit in our little garden. Birthing classes and doctor’s visits: all served to put us on notice, and we did learn the many dangers, the pitfalls, the awful things lying in wait for the unwary traveler. Even all that terrible knowledge, in this era of information overload and access to good medical care, did not sap the enthusiasm and happiness I had begun to allow myself to feel. Breaking new ground, I told myself, when I realized I was slipping the bonds of a lifelong pessimism about the world, and about life. It was absolutely wonderful.

Amidst that burgeoning optimism, I fancied myself setting sail on a vast and glorious ocean, in a fine boat of my own construction. This is easy enough to do under sunny skies and calm seas, of which we had aplenty. Once out on the water, not even a quickening wind and darkening horizon could dampen my optimism, so I sailed on into the storm, instead of away from it.

Of course, we had no choice. Hindsight is perfect…

The day we entered the hospital was surreal, and scary, but almost as if scary through a thick filter. My wife sick, severely so, only we had no idea at first just how severe. She in bed, hooked to devices and tubes and wires, monitored around the clock. Me, parked on the rollout couch-bed, disheveled, worried and not really comprehending the violence of the storm about to break.

Three days in a hospital room is no forty days in the wilderness, but it sure felt like it. All the testing and monitoring and alarms and constant checking of things. Very hard for everyone, especially the mother, and to this day I am still astonished at my blithe ignorance. Almost up to the last hour or two, I was still thinking that we would be home shortly, problem solved and that we would still be taking our planned vacation that summer. My god, I was so wrong. Towards the end of that third day, with a solemn look on her face, the doctor brought us face to face with the awful truth: our babies must be born now if we wanted the best hope of mother and children surviving. That sixteenth day of the month…

Imagine being at the top of mountainous wave, looking down on the green, glassy trough below. The mind reels, the mouth gapes and the knowledge sinks in that little boats aren’t meant to sail mighty oceans. For one small slice of eternity, I was standing in that boat looking down on the water and I could feel the bottom dropping out. Too scared to scream, to move, I gripped the gunwales as the water below came rushing up to meet my little vessel. On that warm summer day, I stood in the grip of dread while sliding down the foam-spattered face of Neptune.

My son and daughter, brought into the world through controlled violence. I stood helplessly by, cursing the roiling sea and screaming to God “I don’t know how to sail…” as the first of many towering waves broke over the bow.

Lake Of Souls, Morning

The shrine is there, visible through open spaces between the trees, splendidly refulgent in shades of emerald, azure or silver depending on the mood of its cousins the sky and sun. The quicksilver surface is occasionally distorted by the splashing of waterfowl and fish, sensual ripples in a watery sheet.

The shrine is there, diffracted through the a million pinhole cameras created by the canopy of leaves and branches. A living shroud, perhaps, a green curtain concealing the mysteries within. The mysteries can be had, by those willing and patient enough to lift the edges of the shroud. Only in this way can one step through to the inner sanctum.

It was not always this way. Before, the lake was just a hole in the ground filled with water.

That was years ago and a persona away. Time has passed and the perceptions, the investments of feelings are different. The focus has changed. It used to be the lake was a pleasant novelty. A green loop to walk around, counting dogs and squirrels and marveling at the geese. Every so often a bike ride was in order, a welcome diversion on a comfortable spring weekend. At this lake, a pair of swans once lived, but the duet faded as one voice succumbed to the ravages of time and the other ceased singing, perhaps due to a broken heart.

The water was just water, green, wet, dotted with feathers, leaves and lily pads. Sometimes, in winter it acquired a crust of ice. Tempting to skaters, which are not allowed, and providing entertainment to onlookers watching ducks flop and skid on the slick surface. This ice was never majestic in an arctic sense, and never gave the impression that it covered anything more than a shallow lake, home to fish and frogs.

And later, souls.

The transformation was slow and subtle, from utilitarian feature of the landscape to a holy vessel akin to those containing the finger bones of saints or the teeth of prophets. It took years to happen, almost unnoticed on many hours of walks and quiet contemplation. The transformation may never have taken hold, too, if not for the beautiful and terrible pressures of time and life bearing down on the walker.

Awe inspiring joy and unspeakable tragedy. The psychic equivalent of plate tectonics acting on the soul and molding it into forms previously unknown and unseen. The walker talked to himself on his many trips around the lake. The lake began to listen to the prayers, the angry screeds, the quiet questions and simple joys discovered in the interior of the mind. There was transference of energy, and the lake stirred from a long, cold slumber.

And one day, the lake spoke back.

The walker realized this, one day in early summer. It was unusually cool and cloudy as he ambled down the path in the green stillness. The lake was there as always, waiting. Passing an opening in the trees and undergrowth, he could not escape the feeling that someone was waiting for him, watching, and whispering to him. There a path draped down a hill, leading into the trees. In the background, glints of silver and grey, almost as voices.

They were there, all of them, and had been for quite some time. Son, daughter, grandmother, family long passed and still of this earth: In his thoughts, in his words, his actions. All this walking and thinking and talking. It was no longer with him exclusively. It was with the lake.

The water now precious, bearing souls. They were with him, now and evermore. The walker climbed the hill, spreading his arms wide to embrace the water.

You are here, he said to the wind, come to me…I am home.

The View From Up Here (Coming Home Is Hard)

Hey…

I’m sorry I’ve been away, dear ones. I’ve been…busy, swept up in stuff. And I’m sorry.

Not that you’d know from stuff, I know. You really didn’t get the chance, now, did you? No. I remember. I was there. There for all of it. Every excruciating, ecstatic minute of it.

(weak smile)
(sigh)
(clearing throat)

How have you been? The birds and the trees and the stars, they keep you company? I hope so. I hope so. They are beautiful, just like you. I remember…I thought…

(head dropping)

Please don’t think me silly when I say this…but when we first brought you here, I was so worried that you wouldn’t be able to see the sky from where you are. I was worried that the fallen leaves or snow or something would get in the way and you wouldn’t be able to see anything.

Especially me.

(soft laughter)
(massaging temples with fingers of one hand)

Silly, yes? I can hear you laughing, I can see the dimples on your cheeks. My god, that has to be (would have been) the most beautiful sound in the world. The universe. And I include the songs of birds and softly falling water and distant thunder in that category. That’s good company, my lovelies…See? The crow agrees!

(grin)
(sigh)

Did I tell you I’m sorry? I am, I truly am. I should be here more often, but I…I haven’t been up to it. Takes a lot of energy sometimes, when I think of you, and I’m scared I won’t have enough. I’m scared I’ll lose it here and never get it back. I think it must be what it is like to try and wrap your arms around the sun. Your arms will never be long enough and it will burn, children, it will burn. This I know. Trust me on that.

Because I wrapped my arms around the sun, once. I still bear the scars and the weight, the gravity of it.

What? Daddy did what?

(closing eyes)

I wrapped my arms around the sun the first time I got to hold you, both of you.

(smile)
(teardrop)

What? Oh, I’m smiling because I remember those moments…you in my arms…and me wondering how it was possible that I had stars in my hands but they felt so light, so delicate…but oh, so beautiful…

(breeze rustling leaves)
(sunlight glinting on the metal)
(shoulders heave)

I heard the song again, on the way over here. You know the one…I do hope you are in the gentle arms…of eden, or something like it. And it has those words in it, the ones that get me every time.

(grin)

No, no, dear ones, Daddy can’t sing. You know that.

(sigh)
(ahem)

“...This is my home, my only home
This is the only sacred ground that I have ever known...”

(choking sob)

“…and should I stray in the dark night alone
Rock me goddess in the gentle arms of eden…”

(silence)
(crow caws)
(hand wiping face)

I’m sorry, kiddos…daddy is real sorry.

(wiping leaves, dirt from gravestones)

I love you, you know that. And I’ll be back.

(kissing fingertips)
(brushing names)

This is my home…

---
Italicized words are lyrics from “The Gentle Arms of Eden” by Dave Carter and Tracy Grammer, from the album Drum Hat Buddha.

Every Little Sparrow Fallen

The death of little creatures is always shocking, no matter the time of day. Death becomes an obscenity in the silver and azure light of a perfect Sunday morning. The body was there, tiny, purplish and fringed with feathers like smoke. It lay nearly in the center of the path. The poor thing insulted by the assault of a gang of flies, nasty hooligans desecrating the memory of the departed, knocking over gravestones and despoiling flowers.

My breath caught in my throat. My left foot hesitated while I performed a stutter step to avoid trampling the body. My stomach lurched at the thought and I was grateful that I had seen it in enough time to avoid such a travesty. I heaved a deep sigh to lessen the pang of sorrow I felt balling up in my gut. I muttered to myself “It’s just a bird”, feeling a little foolish at my reaction. It is the way of the world that even the innocent, the fragile, the beautiful, cannot escape the brutality of death in the morning sun.

Walking and breathing in the perfect air and sunlight, I quickly put distance between myself and the little cairn of sadness that was the baby bird. The weather was perfect and the path around the lake was busy with people out for exercise and relaxation. The recent heavy rains had filled the lake up to brimming, and the greenery was lush and bursting with moisture. Out on the lake, the geese swam around in the lily pads. The starbursts of the lilies standing out brilliant white against the lime-greeniness of the lily pads. I was breathing deep of the air and slowly, slowly the clock spring in my belly began to unwind. It was, I told myself, a beautiful day.

Continuing on around the lake, I bathed in the glory of the light, the breeze, and the melodies of the birds carrying on in the trees. The simple act of walking just felt so good, it seemed impossible that anyone could remain in a funk. That was what I told myself, and I reckoned it was good enough to get me around to the other side of the lake.

Another third of a mile and I was across the first bridge, ambling along the flat part of the trail before it starts to wind itself up and down some gentle inclines on the north side. It is quieter here. Quieter in the sense that generally speaking there are fewer people on that side of the lake. The trees and the undergrowth are thicker. The atmosphere is closer, cooler, greener. It was as I worked my way up the first incline, under trees leaning in overhead, that the tears started.

One moment, at peace. The next, crying softly to myself. It was a complete surprise.

The trigger was a bird call. There was a sparrow or a finch, I really don’t know because I couldn’t see it. It was somewhere among the leaves singing its heart out. The image of the dead baby bird flashed in my mind, I was overwhelmed by a wave of sadness for it. I ran my hand across my face and sternly told myself to quit being so maudlin. It was just a bird, an unlucky little bird in a harsh universe. I snapped out of it and moved on.

Another hill, another birdsong, and another gout of tears. The image of the baby bird wouldn’t leave my head. What in the world was going on? It was going to be a hard slog the rest of the walk if I could not overcome the small sadness of that bird. Except for size, it was no different than the road kill deer I had seen earlier, another hapless victim. I shook my head desperately as if that would fling the images out of my mind. Walking faster also added some much needed distraction.

Crossing the second bridge, the “arboretum” lay just ahead. One of my favorite spots on the trail, it is a long, narrow stand of trees, of nearly all the same species. The path curves up from the bridge and elbows into a straight shot to the other end of the grove. The trees are all slender and tall. The branches high above curve out slightly, lending a nave-like feeling to the space beneath the trunks. The sun shone through the leaves, to dapple the path in spots of gold tinged with emeralds. I smiled slightly and took a deep breath of the sweet air as I entered the arboretum.

It was then a jagged chunk of memory fell from the sky, filtering through the leaves to land with excruciating agony on my head and shoulders. I stumbled and fell…

…into night, in the hospital, July of 2003. I was sitting in a chair in a room without windows. The sounds of sobbing reverberated in the small space. Nearby sat my wife, weeping. Her parents sat on a small couch, tissues in hand and heads bowed. I realized abruptly that much of the sobbing was coming from me. I had been weeping for some time, and showed no signs of stopping. Not anytime soon. I looked down.

The weight in my arms came clear. Inches from my red and swollen eyes were the tiny, pink face of my first born daughter. Her eyes were shut, never to open again. I could see the faint traces of the medical brutalities that had been administered in a heroic but ultimately futile attempt to save her life. I remembering gasping, my heart caving in on itself, writhing like a worm on a hook. I furiously tried to blink away the tears, her visage swimming in and out of focus. Her feathery body was threatening to escape my arms and float away, borne on a wind of misfortune.

Our darling little bird. She had been born too early to leave the nest. Overtaken by a life started much too early, and too frail to fight off the worst the universe had to offer. A feathery pink-purple angel swaddled in clothes she was never meant to wear. Amidst the sounds of broken hearts, I caressed her cool cheek and begged God to let the bird sing, if even for a little while longer…

Sharp white sunlight filled my eyes with stars, ethereal spangles floating in a film of hot liquid saltiness. Stepping from the shadows of the arboretum and into the sun was a small shock, like getting hit with a bucket of warm water after a cool bath. I found myself walking slowly down the path and breathing as if sipping the air. I could not recall having walked through the trees, but there I was, in a daze and blinking as if I had seen a ghost.

Which I suppose was true in some way.

I wiped my face with the back of my hand, struggling to regain my composure. Somewhere up ahead, another bird trilled a love song of my memory. I reached out my hand to shield my eyes from the glare of the sun. I could not see the source of the warbling.

But in my heart, another bird echoed the song, an exquisite duet. I moved forward into the cerulean embrace of a lovely Sunday morning, satisfied that God hears every little sparrow that falls.

I know I do.

------

Many thanks to Flux Capacitor for additional synchronicity. Go here for enlightenment and perspective. Thank you, Maggie May; may you find peace.

Books, Unwritten

At the table, in the sunlight streaming through the window, I sit and daydream on a cold and windy winter day. The golden sun spills across the dark wood, illuminating the whorls and lines that remind me of the polished shell of a casket, as it is lowered slowly into the ground. I press my hands hard into the blood-warm surface, bracing myself as a wave of dizziness threatens to knock me out of the chair in which I sit. It passes, and my feet find purchase on the floor not unlike the ocean bottom. I breathe deep.

“I could sleep
When I lived alone
Is there a ghost in my house?”

A quavery voice croons from the radio. I stifle a flash of irritation; how did he know I was thinking of ghosts? And I haven’t slept well in many moons.

I do dream of ghosts, often.

It is perhaps the best way I know to remember them, call them forth when I feel the need for an infusion of memories. I have no need of a medium or an Ouija board or human gateway to find these ghosts living in my heart. They are there, to be conjured up in a ray of sunlight, a gust of wind, the flight of birds. To step outside, listening and feeling is to welcome them into my consciousness, however tenuous that may be.

Before me are a computer, an old spiral bound notebook and a thick journal bound in a mottled black cover. A pen is clipped to the spine; it is half-full of sepia-toned ink. These are the tools I use to communicate and to capture. By capture I mean capture an instant, not a physical restraint of the quarry at hand. I would never think of them that way, and it would be disrespect in the highest degree to restrain their ghosts in such a manner.

I do not want stuffed animals on display. I want butterflies to perch on my fingers, occasionally.

The sun warms the backs of my hands, as I sleepily rub my eyes. The cursor on the screen blinks slowly. Sometimes it is hard to dispel the notion that the cursor is mocking me, the blinking a slow sticking out of an electronic tongue and a waggle of fingers in the ears. Absurd notion, to be sure, and it never fails to elicit a grin. I want to reach out and push that tongue back into its digital mouth. I can’t do that yet, though. My pen is hovering over the paper, but the words just won’t come, not yet.

The hesitation is caused in part by the pictures I can see on the wall, of the twins that were taken early on in the hospital. They have been there for a long time, resting on little wooden shelves affixed to the wall. They make me think of Old World homes with the memory walls bearing pictures of family, or a household shrine. Yes, a household shrine, with the photographs in their dark wood frames assuming the role of spirit-tablets. The faces of the departed forming pictograms in a language known only to four people in the world, of which I am one. I am anxious to know its grammar and syntax, its dialects, and record the knowledge before it fades from use.

The language exists, as all languages seem to, in written and spoken forms. I say spoken but it is less an aural construct and more of a physical one. The closest equivalent would be sign language. I never had the honor and the pleasure of exchanging sounds or words with my twins. I talked to them on their brief time on earth, hoping that perhaps they would at least know I was there, just so they could know the sound of my voice. They never had a chance to speak back to me, and that makes my heart sore.

No, our communications were primarily by touch. Changing a diaper was an intense conversation between us. My fingers gently holding the tiny legs, their fingertips delicate against my skin, pink skin like new born lambs. To place my hands on them even for a minute was an afternoon of dialogue. Was that really speech, or was that a song? If it was song, then it was a duet of epic proportions. Think of it as a silent love song, the notes exchanged through the blood-warm tympanum of skin to skin.

So how to record this new found language, make sense of these beautiful songs, when I am newly minted as a scribe and know little of music? Perhaps the written word is my only recourse. It is the only medium I dare claim proficiency in. Books were my savior once, but it never occurred to me then to write my own. Now I have no choice.

The notebook and the journal comfort me with their weight and presence. Physical, slightly giving, but tender upon the hands. Much like the ethereal weight of the twins I once had the honor of touching. Books in my hands. I have shelves full of books, on the three floors of the humble house I call my home. There is a large stack of books threatening to take over the corner of my bedroom between the nightstand and the dresser. And the nightstand itself is groaning under the weight of books to be read. It is an embarrassment of riches I willingly will take on. Books have been, since I first learned to read, both portal and shield for me. Books allowed me access to the world and protection from it at the same time.

Portals and shields: at first glance, two tiny infants would hardly seem capable of assuming such lofty roles. They were so vulnerable, so small, and when I first saw them that day in the NICU I had no idea of their hidden identities. I have meditated on them almost every day for the last near six years, and it was only recently that the idea came clear to me.

The babies were going to be my door into understanding the world, and my shield against the everyday insanities of reality. At that moment, I felt more strongly connected to the human race than maybe any other moment of my life. Being human was no longer an abstraction, it was a reality. I looked upon them and saw myself, blood, brains and heart. No longer could I act as a passive observer of life; I was in it. In the first days, I felt like now I would have a chance to really wrap my head around life, because I would have a safe place to go when it got to be too much. I saw myself putting my arms around them as an antidote to all the bad stuff swirling around out in the world.

Doorways to the world, protection from it. More beautiful manifestations I could not imagine.

They are gone, of course. Fragile souls laid to rest and signified with markers of stone and bronze. I stare at the screen in front of me, running my hands over the scratchy paper and brown ink on the pages in the notebook and the journal. The children have not disappeared. The empty pages have told me so. I pick up the pen, remove the cap. Ink flows and stains the pages.

My portal, my shield, laid down in the pages of books unwritten.

Desert Storm

24 November 2003

Haiku #28:
Dry hiss, sand on stone,
Covering all signs of life
Where rain had fallen

I sit and listen, in my mind, to the faint whisper of dry wind blowing across my soul. It is the sound of sand scraping across rocks, or the rattling of dried stalks of beach grass. This arid scratching is a beautiful sound, a natural sound. The product of a complex interaction of wind and earth. The sound calms, centers me in the absence of traffic or people noise. It takes the place of human speech, which is when I like it most. The faint raspiness can be quite desolate. It whispers to me of the irresistible march of time, and of a past long forgotten. The small tickticktick of sand hitting dry, brown grass sometimes reminds me of the living things now dead, or perhaps sleeping. The hollow stalks a bittersweet reminder of the cycle of life and death.

The stalks once green and juicy, the cells full of sap and water. The wind through them at that moment of vibrant life is a happy, comforting sound. In dryness, the sound of bones rattling in a box. These sounds remind me to be patient; through the passage of time, the seasons round upon themselves. What once was withered and shrunken in winter grows green and full in the spring. Not for all things, perhaps, but enough to eagerly await the changes, as I sit here and gaze out the window.

Sometimes the noise grows deeper, surrounding the mind and allowing no escape. It insinuates itself into every fold of consciousness to create a filter of sand and static. When this happens Spring feels very far away, a ship out on the horizon, tiny and gray. The filter renders it difficult to believe that anything was once green and alive and that it will be again.

Life then becomes a waiting game. How long can it be tolerated, the constant wind, the low murmur and moan, the mental fatigue from parsing so much intellectual grit? This is unknown to me. What is known to me is that the parched canyon of my soul once carried life, green and vibrant. Flowers once furred the ground along the banks at the bottom. The wait: sky watching and anxious for the next life-giving storm.

A storm is in some measure what the twins meant to me. These children were the furious “50-year storm” appearing suddenly in my desert. They drenched everything with the water of life, stirring many slumbering things from their rest beneath the red-brown sand. It is like a desert where the insects and the flowers encase their larvae and seeds in near impenetrable shells, to lie in stasis while awaiting that storm of a lifetime. The clouds gather, and then burst in a torrent over soil baked for years. As if by magic, the ground is covered with flowers. The air is thick with insects swarming out of hibernation, their brief frenzied lives making the most of this transient opportunity.

Life before the twins was much like that. They soaked my soul with a downpour of love. Something began moving inside, shaking off the burden of a long sleep to stretch upward to the life-giving rain.

Deserts have a unique, majestic beauty if one cares to look for it. Canyons and mesas show this to be true. But I have come to know my soul wants to be green and growing. The twins showed me that I cannot live in “splendid isolation”, contemplating a wide-open desert under a blinding bright sky. In my life, I had forgotten that I enjoy rain now and again, all the more so when the rain carries with it the power of unconditional love.

This is the realization that my soul had grown arid over the years in a process so gradual that I never saw the changes taking place. I slowly grew used to it, unthinking, unknowing: a slow drip such that I thought it was normal now and had always been. I grew very fond of the desert. It never rained, and there were few others to disturb my grand solitude. Not much seemed to change and I was accustomed to that state of affairs.

Stasis was acceptable for the sake of not having to change. This is a wonderful state of affairs if it is possible to delude oneself into thinking that one is truly an island. I became brittle and petrified. I was a master in convincing myself that I had no need to change. After all, I told myself, stability on my own terms is what I craved. Stability is what I got, at the cost of losing considerable humanity within.

This cloudburst in the shape of my children brought me back to life. I was awestruck and grateful beyond the capacity to express it. The twins made me realize that I am capable of love in all its dimensions, and that I truly am a human being. The desert in me disappeared under a carpet of new life, green and vibrant. It is cruel beyond imagination that they are gone, and I have felt my soul start to crack and shrink again. I am praying for another storm.

POSTSCRIPT:

February 12th, 2009
Deep down, I am grateful that I never forgot that life was possible. I have my Wee Lass now. And there are other, different storms out there, on the way. I turn my face to the rain.

Butterfly and Bear: A Midwinter Heartsong

In the morning I arose to face another midwinter day stuck somewhere in the middle of Nothing In Particular. No joy, no sorrow, no pain, no pleasure. You were not on my mind as I performed my morning rituals. I didn’t see you in the mirror as the razor scraped my cheeks. There were no reflections in the tired eyes staring out at me as I massaged my cheeks.

Not that I expected there to be any inkling of you. I dressed myself and I ate my breakfast like I always do. I helped get she who is your sister (did you know? Does she?) ready for day care, breakfast eaten, clothes on, in the car. I was dimly aware that something was different when I stepped outside and into a sunny day. The air was cool, not cold, and smelled so fresh and clean. A few lungfuls and I perked up like a dry flower getting water after too long without. Your sister chattered her way to school and we listened to some music with a little sing along for good measure.

On the way back home, the car was pointing straight at the sun, and the orangey-yellow light suffused the car with the color of summer peaches. I felt something inside me loosen a little, the muscles in my diaphragm becoming unlaced. I actually began to feel…content.

Content, until I sat down at my computer to do some job searching, catch up on some correspondence. Children, it wasn’t easy. The very thought filled me with dread, and I was overwhelmed by sleepiness. I had to force myself to work through it. And I did, mostly. I managed to get two job contacts fulfilled, with resumes winging their way whither things wing once the ‘send’ button is pushed.

That was about all I could take before the walls caved in and the roof fell on my head and the sunlight coming through the back window was just too bright for me to take looking at it from inside this house that sometimes feels like a monastery, or a prison cell. Brother Heron was calling out to me from the back of my head, saying ‘Run, boy, run” so I did. Daddy got up and ran like Old Nick had just stuck his head in the door and said hello.

I grabbed my keys and my journals and my iPod and took off like a shot, barely remembering to lock the door on the way out. The sun was really bright and the sky that cerulean to die for, but I barely noticed. I was hyperventilating and my heart was pounding as I jumped in the car. Kids, you wouldn’t know what “burn rubber” means, but that’s just about what I did hightailing it out of the parking lot. I had some music on the player, funny, it was “Break the Same” and “Chaos” by Mutemath. I know, kids, I know: after your time, but Daddy really likes them. I don’t really remember the drive, but I made it safe.

I wasn’t as panicked as I had been when I left the house, just felt good to be away from the walls closing in, reminders of all the chores I need to do. Daddy laughs, my children, because he likes to think that where you are now, there aren’t chores to be done! Better not be, else I’ll have to have words with whoever is in charge of the joint.

So I jumped out of the car, leaving the iPod inside, and the books. I wanted my hands and ears free, no distractions while I walked. All the better to hear and to see what was out there today. The path was still very icy in spots. My mood wasn’t improved by slipping and nearly falling many times in the first quarter mile. Don’t worry, kids, I only used one expletive. At a time.

I wasn’t in the best frame of mind when I crossed the bridge at the west end of the lake and started up the hill. The path was in full sun, the trees a little thinner and on the right side of the hill for full sun. I was in no guise thinking of you, my daughter and son. I as hiked up the hill and up into the wise open sunlight at the top, something happened to change all of that.

I walked up the rise into the light of day
And you were there in a sky full blue
I heard the singing of birds, looking at me
And you were there in the sound

I drew a lungful of cold air, and it felt so good
Because you were there, just like oxygen
I shaded my eyes from the glare of the ice
But you were there in the rays striking my face

I wept, the clean smell of snow in my nostrils
And I wiped my face hoping no one would see
But then I started to smile without stopping
And my heart began to swell

Because you were there

I threw out my arms, laughing and sobbing
Surely, the dog walkers and the joggers
Would call the police, thinking I was mad
As I proclaimed “They are here, in my heart”

Down the hill, into the trees, squirrels twitch their tails
And greet the lunatic in their midst
A fresh flow of tears on my cheeks
When I raise my hand to greet you both

Because you were there

Brief moment of doubt as the trees close in
And shield the geese from my view
I thought I was mistaken, maybe just daft
But no, a goose called out and I heard your voices

This is too much I thought, head spinning
Maybe I should lay down in the leaves here
Beside the path and wait for the ghosts to depart
My vision dimmed as I staggered down another hill

Because you were there

Another laugh bubbles up, and rainbows in my eyes
As the salty prisms diffract the sun into a billion drops
My god, you’re full of stars I say to myself
And clasp my hands to my heart swelling with joy

The woodpeckers did it, avian hammers banging
Out your names on a tree deep in the wood
I said “My son, my daughter” and begged the birds not to stop
And they obliged, the drums only fading as I walked away

Because you were there
North end of the lake, out in full yellow gold light
I gasp at the sight of wide open water, saying
“My children, you see this, you know this beauty!”
I fold my arms low to hold you both as witness

Laughing like a loon now, a vision appears in my head
Of a street where a door beckons me in
And a bull waits calmly outside a house
Waiting for something, just like me

The door is on the other side of the world
I know, I can tell, but I can see you, daughter!
Your back to me as you enter the temple
And I shout with joy, following behind

The bull is also there, a subcontinent away
And so am I, standing in an alien street
Amazed by the power and silent grace
Of an animal that harbors you, my son

Because you were there

Spring is not far away, and with it comes you both,
A butterfly and bear, awake from the winter slumber
Come to me, alight on my arm, nuzzle my hand
As we delight in the presence of one another

So it is that I spread my arms to embrace the world
And you, my children, unseen but in it
I raise a toast to you, the candle and the light
A brimming glass raised to life itself!

I ran away from myself this morning, only to be found alive, because you were there.

Meteors

November 30, 2003

It was my maternal grandmother, G-maw Baker that introduced me to stargazing when I was a little boy. She was an amateur astronomer, and had a telescope at her house that I loved to play with whenever I would visit. G-maw and I would bundle up and head outside to look for double stars, clusters, nebulae and do some moon gazing. When she got somewhat older and less able to stand out in the cold (winter being better for stargazing in the Northern hemisphere) it fell to me to find the stars or whatever we wanted to see, while she waited inside to stay warm. It was a task I came to enjoy. “G-maw, come see!” I would say, and she would amble outside for us to take turns peeking through the lens. It was such a joy.

While not involving a telescope, meteor showers were particularly exciting for her. I can still recall her saying to me that the “Leonids” or the “Taurids” were coming up soon, we needed to be ready for them. She would always watch for the weather reports, hoping for clear skies, the better to see the trails. I often looked forward to these events because it gave me a reason to stay up past midnight to get the full shower effect. G-maw had explained to me that was because the Earth’s rotation was then at the best angle for the meteors to hit the atmosphere. Funny, though, I can’t remember actually being able to stay awake that long. When I was little, even lying on the cold, hard ground was not enough to keep me awake. I also remember being afraid of getting hit by a meteor while outside. G-maw would just laugh and tell me to remember that most meteors burned up before they hit the ground, so I would be okay.

As I got older my interest in sky watching and meteor showers began to wane. In my teen years the joint viewing sessions with G-maw became less frequent. It was typical adolescent behavior, me finding it more important to hang out with friends (and get into trouble) than to spend time with an old lady who just happened to be family. I am not proud of myself, I can tell you.

G-maw was a stubborn woman, but also wiser than I knew. She had seen a lot in her relatively long life. I am sure she knew in her heart that little boys grow up, and teenage egos have a tendency to lose interest in the older folks. Little boys think they know more than they really do. At that time, I thought my grandmother was okay with my teenage callowness. Being as young, stupid and arrogant as that implies I just let it pass. She may have, on the surface, been okay with my disinterest. Subconsciously, it was always there, that little bit of sadness on both of our parts. I could tell because G-maw would offer to take me out for pizza, just the two of us for dinner, and I could never say no. There was always a twinge in my heart that I could not explain.

I will never forget one of our last pizza dinners together, shortly after I had turned of legal age to drink alcohol. We went to a local Pizza Hut and I decided to be daring and order a glass of beer. Pretty heady stuff, to be all worldly and drinking in front of my grandmother! I was a bit nervous, wondering if she was going to say anything. The waitress brought the glass, set it on the table in front of me, and G-maw just laughed. She had a twinkle in her eyes and asked me if she could have some of the beer! “I’ve been known to have a beer now and then” was all she said. I felt so much more comfortable with her after that incident.

I had no way of knowing at the time that G-maw would become very ill, and would pass away from cancer within the next two years. I suppose that if I had, I would have ordered a few more glasses, so we could raise a toast to a wonderful person possessed of a life well lived.

Something else I was not fully aware of then, was just how much she loved me. It was because of that love that she wanted to spend time with me. My grandfather had passed away shortly after I was born, about two decades before. Many of her extended family were far away, and it was me and my brother and my parents that she had close. If I had not been so self-absorbed, if had taken the scales from my eyes, I would have dropped the teenage attitudes of self-importance and truly understood the value of her presence. I would have been much more willing to spend time with her.

As I said, G-maw was a wise woman. She knew there was no getting blood from turnips, and she did not press me to be more considerate. I still regret being so selfish and not willing to give more of my time. It never ceases to amaze me that G-maw loved me in spite of myself.

There is one meteor shower in particular that stands out in my memory. G-maw and I, along with my mother and brother, were out in my front yard looking up at the sky. We had been out there for quite some time with very little activity, and everyone was getting restless. A few dim meteor tracks and stiff necks were all we had to show for our efforts and we were just about to pack it in when a most amazing thing happened. We all gasped. Low to the horizon, where we least expected it, there was what appeared to be a fireball hurtling across the sky. It was very bright, and to my eyes it appeared to have a greenish tinge. It was moving very fast and had a trail that seemed like it was miles long. Suddenly, it began to shoot off what looked like sparks and BOOM, it exploded into fragments radiating outward. The fragments glowed and rapidly faded from view.

We were stunned. I had never seen anything like it, and have not ever since then. G-maw said it was a ‘bolide’, a meteor that ignites in the atmosphere and more or less explodes. It was a little unsettling, but very beautiful. I was and am so grateful that my grandmother was there and cared enough to show me such an amazing example of natural beauty.

Natural beauty was very much on my mind on this November day, as we went out to the cemetery to visit with Connor and Emma. It was cold and breezy, with partly cloudy skies. The wind chimes were in full song. The bronze grave markers were very clean from all the rain we had the previous week. There was very little dirt and leaves to be swept off, just a small amount of mud which I brushed away. Standing there in the cold, I started sobbing while gazing at the names on the plaques. The thought kept looping through my head that we had given Connor and Emma such beautiful names, names that we had spoken far too little. I was thinking of the arc they both made through our lives.

When they were in the NICU, even with all the medical equipment and tape and tubes, my daughter and son possessed an unearthly beauty. It was beauty that would draw you in, helpless to take one’s eyes away from. I looked up into the sky to try and clear my eyes, and it was then that my grandmother and the meteors came back to me. So it was with my darling Emma and Connor. Heavenly objects of rare beauty, they burst into light across our sky, so fast and so bright that I still carry the afterimages burned into my retinas.

G-maw had shown me something rare and exquisitely beautiful. She had shown me things that were here and gone almost before you knew it. The lesson she had taught me was that you just have to be patient and watch; they will come to you. The sadness I felt struck so deep today, because I realized that I never had the chance to return G-maw’s favor, and show her beautiful and precious meteors of my own.

I like to think that G-maw knows, just the same.

-------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

SPECIAL NOTE: Tomorrow I will be posting a special collaborative effort with Michelle at Confessions of a Desperate Housewife. We found it exciting, and we hope you will, too! So please set a reminder to check in here and there. Thanks!

Love Radiator

26 July 2003

2:30 pm: He had a good day today.
Arterial line removed, may not need replacement. Good.
Blood gas checks will decrease, fewer heel sticks. Good.

It’s about 4:00 now, son, not that you really understand time right now. Or maybe you do, you just hve no way of telling us. I can’t tell sometimes, either. Really tired, and it messes with my sense of time. Good thing they have a lot of clocks in here, always easy to tell time. Although I wish the digits weren’t red. Red doesn’t soothe me, too active, and I’m anxious enough just walking through the door.

Sorry, son, I didn’t mean to ramble. I’m distracted, by fatigue and hunger and these damn headaches I keep getting. I’m distracted by the sight of you laying there, all small and pinkish and curled up on that pillow. The plastic cover almost disappears sometimes when I’m watching you. But it’s still there, as I keep forgetting when I reach out to touch you, only to knock my fingers against it. I hope the noise doesn’t bother you too much. Anyway, I meant to tell you about something else I feel when I come in here to look at you. Yeah, I’m nervous and tense, but I feel really good at the same time. Especially when I walk around the corner after having scrubbed my hands and arms, and can finally get to your side. Really good, a calmness that sort of spreads over me like wrapping myself in a warm towel, fresh from the dryer. The calm I get when I watch the sunrise, or geese swimming across a lake. And every time it happens, I look at you and I wonder, How do you do it?

3:30 pm?: Surgical consult. The doctor says he has a hernia.
A what? An inguinal hernia. Is that bad?
It needs repairing, soon, not now.
The NICU nurse says he can be circumcised at the same time.
Great. Just great.

When I asked how do you do it, I was wondering how you could make me feel so good, how you make it so I don’t want to leave this place. Not while you are here, anyway. Otherwise there is little to recommend it. All the machines, the blinking lights, the constant beeping. Lots of hand washing; I don’t think my hands and arms have ever been this clean in my life! It isn’t so bad when it is quiet in here, son. And by quiet, I mean less noisy, not noise free. The nurses and parents and doctors are in and out of here constantly. They have to be. But later in the day, and especially when regular visiting hours are over, there is a certain hush that comes over this place. I like those moments, my son. It is then I can pull my chair a little closer to you, rest my head on the isolette, and just look at you, meditate on you. With the lights down a little low, it’s like a shrine, with you at the heart of it. It draws me in, and I wondered, if we turned the lights off, would you throw off your own radiance?

8:20 pm: His oxygen is down slightly. Odd, but that is a good thing.
Nurse C. says he has been sleeping well.
He likes being on his belly, his crits are better when he does.
‘Gives sleeping like a baby’ a whole new meaning.

Radiance of an unearthly kind in the light shining on you, kiddo. It isn’t unearthly in a bad sense. Heavenly is the word I was looking for. You, a pink onyx figurine lit from within. It’s beautiful. No, let me rephrase, you are beautiful. Yours is a beauty terrible and wonderful to behold; I have no desire to be anywhere else. It is this light that fascinates me. I will not say I am the moth and you are the flame; that makes it sound dangerous or that I might get burned if I were to get too close. Really, I am not close enough, because I cannot hold you, at least not yet. This explains the pain in my arms, the ache of supporting a void not yet filled. Wait, was that a twitch, did your fingers just move? I put my hand in the isolette, quickly but softly, to brush your fingertips with mine. Little pink feathers. I breathe against the plastic and wonder, what is this strange attractor that draws me in?

9:10 pm?: Skin color has improved, not as much yellow.
Light therapy is helping, the mask protects his eyes.
The heart murmur detected earlier appears to have “resolved”.
Good. Avoiding surgery is good.

I know, son, I know. It came to me in a flash. The light that is you creates its own gravity that acts only on those of your blood. That must be it. This is the force that draws your mother and I back here, day after day, night after night. I can feel it when I am at home. I can feel it while I am making toast (one of the few things I can keep down these days), taking a shower, while trying to fall asleep. This ghostly tugging at my heart. Do you know what you have done, my son? You are a miracle of modern science! You are creating love at a distance. Imagine that! Your tiny body a pink loaf of bread with the density of a neutron star, sending out wave after wave of powerful love. The molecules of my heart resonate to your frequency and I find myself drawn back to you. This is a circuit I would never willingly abandon. How could I? This hospital room, this plastic shell that is your home, has become the chapel and shrine to which I make my daily pilgrimage. I come on my knees to bask in the presence of your love.

9:41 pm?: Final summary. Nurse C. tells me your kidneys and bowels are functioning.
Tomorrow we may actually be able to feed you. Feed you!
A tube and syringe with some mother’s milk and something else.
Better than nothing. The nurse asks if I am okay, chiding me gently.
She tells me to go home, sleep, and eat. The parents need care, too.

So I’ll leave you now. I am exhausted. Oh, before I go, here is a picture of your sister. The one with the ring. I thought you’d like that. We didn’t get one of you wearing it. Later, perhaps.

Good night.

……

I’ll be back, how could I not? I orbit the Sun, hungry for its light.

Blood of My Blood

Two minutes. That is all it took. Two minutes and I went from driving over to get bagels for breakfast, to standing in the hospital crying through a hot mess of tears and letting the wall hold me up. Instead of ham and cheese on sesame, I was staring down at the blood on my hands and thinking, This may be the best day of my life.

Of course, it didn’t start out that way. It happened when I least expected it. That’s always the case, is it not? Ha. I should know that as well as anyone at this point. Sometimes I believe that I am a poster child for chaos theory in action, a swirling edge condition in my own loopy web of strange attractors.

I don’t mind it so much anymore. I have been seasoned by this randomness, like a cast iron skillet with fifty years of hot cornbread under its belt.

This particular burst of quantum activity originated, as so many of them do, with my daughter. Today was our weekly ‘Father and Daughter’ bagel day, so we were driving on our way to the bagel store in a nearby neighborhood shopping center. The land fronting along the road that borders the shopping center had remained undeveloped for a very long time, but late last year a building began to take shape at the corner lot. In a particularly timely bit of irony, the new building going up is a bank. A BANK, in this time of economic meltdown; it is to laugh.

Being an architect, I have been following the building progress with more than casual interest. Being the curious child that she is, Wee Lass has also been following the building progress. Every time we pass it, she comments on it (“Look, Daddy, is that bricks?”) or on the people (“Daddy, are they working on a Saturday?”) or the machines (DADDY! Did you see the big scooper? WOW!”); she also remembers what she saw on previous visits. She has commented many times on how many ‘sticks’ (her word for the metal studs) had been put up, or how many ‘rocks’ or bricks were on site. She even noticed before I did, that the aluminum windows had been installed after the roof was closed in. There has been very little she has missed.

This morning she was her usual chatty self as we drove past the new bank building. There has been a lot of progress recently, so much so that Wee Lass interrupted herself to excitedly exclaim “Daddy, the building is finished, are they going to be inside?” The building isn’t almost finished, as the professional in me noted, but she was excited and it wasn’t worth trying to explain. So I agreed and said that yes, they would be inside soon. She was going on about the bricks and the trucks outside, my attention started to wander. Then she started asking about other buildings.

“Daddy, did they build buildings when you were a little boy?” I laughed. (No dear, just straw huts. Jeez, am I pre-historic? Oh, well)
“Yes, they did.”
“What kind of buildings?”
“Banks, stores, other things.”
“Did they build a hospital for you when you were a little baby, Daddy?” What, where did that come from? I chuckled.
“Yes, there was a hospital when I was a little baby, sweet pea.”
“I was in a hospital when I was a little baby, daddy.” Yes, I heard.

By this time we had pulled into a parking space. Just as I was getting out of the car, she said “I cried when I was born a little baby, daddy.” I remembered that, too; I replied “So did I, sweetie.” She seemed incredulous. Then it happened. As I was getting her out of her car seat, she looked up at me and said “I cried when they took me out of mommy’s tummy, daddy.”

Thermocline. A boundary condition in the body of water in which I am drowning. Warm and thin above, cold and dense below. The temperature drops rapidly, sharply as I break the edge, swirling in turbulence. I am engulfed in cold density. I am in the hospital, wondering what in the hell just happened.

I remember noise, and light. There was a lot of beeping in the background, people in hospital scrubs and masks, voices low and professional talking about “blood pressure” and “She looks good” and “Are you alright?” It took a few seconds for me to comprehend that last question was directed at me. I turned my head slightly to see a nurse next to me, her face smeary through the flood of tears filling my eyes. Glancing over her shoulder, I could see someone lying on the table, body draped in bloodied surgical blankets. I remember then that it was The Spouse. She was kind of still, but no one seemed to be worried. A sigh of relief, she was awake. I told the nurse in a croak that I was okay, I’ll just lean on the wall for a bit. She smiled sweetly, and turned to attend to some other business.

I slumped there, still crying. I turned my head back to the right; the body of Wee Lass lay out before me on a stack of white towels in the warmer. She was trembling and pink, wailing at the top of her freshly opened lungs. There was a little cap on her head, blue and white knit clinging to her tiny skull.

She was beautiful.

On the table next to the warmer was a pile of gauze and some heavy stainless steel surgical scissors. The gauze was slightly stained, little crimson patches shocking against the snowy fabric. The scissors appeared to have been used. It was at that moment that I saw that Wee Lass no longer had the umbilicus attached to her navel. It had been cut. I reached out my hand to her, letting her tiny fingers grope and squeeze the tips of my fingers. I imagined it to be the caresses from the soft, wavy tendrils of a sea anemone. A fresh flood of hotness spilled down my cheeks. Through the watery haze, I could see a dark smear running along the side of my hand. I bent down for a closer look. It was blood, almost dried.

It hit me that it wasn’t my blood, it was hers. It must have happened when I cut the cord earlier. I am stunned, a fleeting spike of revulsion through my gut, to be replaced by a wave of warmth. My daughter’s blood, the very stuff of life, highlighting the wrinkles and lines of my skin. Curious, I raise my hand to my lips, placing them gently on the crimson stain. The blood is not wet, and I kid myself that its warmth is what remains of the heat as it left my daughter. A light blooms in my skull, and I know what I must do. This blood is not the oil of Exodus, but it will suffice. I brush my hand over my brow, blood against the skin anointing me. On the warmer, my daughter wails at the top of her lungs, a tiny hurricane welcoming me into the Church of Life.

Thermocline. Flailing desperately to free myself from the viscous deep, I swim hard into the warm water above. The surface breaks over me in a million silver drops. I find myself blinking hard and Wee Lass is looking up at me again, half out of the car. She says it again:

“Daddy, I cried when they took me out of mommy’s tummy.”
“I remember, sweet pea.”

I cried, too.