After the women in my family gave birth, the wings of the butterfly in their throat became weak. I wonder why. I’m investigating this now. The wings in mine have become overactive, flapping frantically. I wish I had been more proactive in protecting this precious gland in early postpartum. I wish I had been more proactive in a lot of things. I couldn’t have known mothering a daughter would be so confronting. I had to experience it to really grasp how imperative it is for me to free myself and to purify my matrilineal line so she doesn’t have to bear the weight of another incoherent woman. Incoherent as in when the true self of a woman is severed from her daily thoughts and actions, a wandering ghost, no protection of self, no safeguarding of one’s own heart, harmful narratives clouding wisdom, thinking this life is all there is, not taking what is needed, not doing what needs to be done fast enough, not protecting the things she loves, not trusting the divine, herself, life.

“The mind does not end when we die. It will always be there. It has no beginning and no end. The point here is to see that, at the end of this life, the mind and physical aggregates separate. We always thought during our life that this coalition of mind and body are one and indivisible; that this is me, this is who I am. We have this very strong grasping towards this coalition. However, when we die, they separate. The mind goes its own way and the body just stays there and goes to waste. The problem is, what goes on is only our mind, which is the basis for carrying all the imprints and tendencies accumulated throughout our life. This is what goes on to the future life. So what really matters is whether you’ve developed a kind mind or a negative mind.”

Here is a brief summary of the ghost story Jesse told me after we googled “how do ghosts become ghosts?” and the answer is when a person lives a confused and aimless life: a woman moves into a house and feels the energy of the past (passed) owners. While in the backyard gardening she feels the voice of a woman saying “I used to plant flowers here” and other things like this. In the house there’s a stir of energy. She brings new furniture in the home, makes changes to the layout, moves things around, does some repairs. The deceased husband who lived there before he died kept getting mad whenever she would make a change. She befriended the husband and wife ghosts and told them that she’d let them know whenever she was about to bring something new in or change something so that they wouldn’t be too shocked by it. They appreciated this. One day the new owner was in the bathroom and the ghost husband opens the door and lets himself in. The new owner becomes furious. She tells him that they need to be out of the house by morning, that he crossed a boundary and they are no longer welcome there. She laid in bed that night feeling a lot of movement and commotion until 3am when suddenly it was silent. She fell asleep. In the morning they weren’t there. They left. They listened.

I’m struck by this woman’s firm boundary. And by how important the way we live and think and speak (or don’t) or act (or don’t) is and how these things affect our death and our afterlife.

What’s the difference between a sunset over a mountain range visible from the passenger seat of an old pink Ford driving down the freeway in the state of Washington and the orange and pink over the peaks and valleys in The One and Only California? One of them isn’t California. Baby says he can feel at home anywhere. I sat on the toilet this morning, eyes half closed, remembering yesterday. How it was Sunday, the 7th day. A sadness comes over me each seventh day. It hasn’t always but it always does now. Thankfully always never means what you think it does. There’s really no such thing. It’s so nice to live into things. It’s a real privilege and it’s forever unpromised and I hate it. I used to indulge in thoughts about what my daughter will grow up seeing: the color sheets we have, the art we chose to display on the walls, the patterns on our pillows. I liked surveying the room wondering what her memory will hold onto, seeing things the way she might see them and feeling proud for having good taste. Now, at 110 pounds, she sees me in sweatpants mostly and cheap sweaters and I’ve never been the sweater type. You just kind of have to be when you live somewhere cold. I want to live into the days that Penelope will see her mother in a vintage pink dress with ruffles, blue eyeshadow, nails done, feeling beautiful, speaking beautifully, living joyfully, peacefully, at ease. How did @coravioletwalters become Cora Violet Walters? I want to be sure I’m there when my daughter is seven and she gets stung by a bee. I want to be her mama forever.

I want to be sure that I will get old, that my hair will grow long and gray, that I will walk through the snow up a mountain with my dogs, and when the phone rings it’ll be one of the kids on the other line, just called to talk. I want to be sure that Health will always return, that my Husband and I will go dancing. In the future we go dancing. We get bundled up and face the cold dark winter to go dancing. I haven’t been able to imagine the future clearly. My future. Ours. Any. And maybe it’s because chemicals are falling from the sky and putting me in a haze. Or I’m feeling what everyone is feeling. Scared. Fighting for their life in some way, for something.

For a quick moment I had a vision and I really thank God for it because I needed it. It’s this: Jesse and I are at the window, sharing a nighttime cigarette, blowing the smoke out so no one will ever know. The kids are asleep in bed. Our hearts are light. When this day comes I note it because I’m impressed and relieved that we made it. I lived to see the day that we put the kids down together. That I get a few hours of uninterrupted time with the man I married and we’re not talking about money or either of our grief. Smoking tobacco is a symbol of health, for me, personally. It means I’m in love and it’s okay to relax, that the world is safe and so is my body, that my love is in all the right places, that tomorrow won’t only come but we’ll even be excited it arrived in the morning. We used to smoke in the bath. One night, we put the laptop on the toilet with the Pamela Anderson documentary on, rolled a cigarette for each of us, ended up sharing both.

He didn’t have to work today and the sun was coming through the windows and we kissed and I wondered if everyday could be like this. And he said maybe one day it could be and for the first time in a long time I felt like maybe the future is fruitful, after all. Maybe it won’t just be me and baby from morning til night. Maybe 9am wants to hold us all together again.

Maybe yesterday was the last Sunday that made me cry because we have friends now. I cried on the way to their house because the mountains weren’t in the desert and the sunset over them gave me the feeling that they were. I don’t know where I am. I never know where I am or where I’m going or how to get there or where to park or who to call or where the acupuncturist is, where the herbalist is, who I am here, what to wear here, but I do know there will be a melancholy present. Like a banana going bad in a fruit bowl on everyone’s counter, you can count on it. My melancholy is molding. I want it gone. It’s making me sleepy. Do you think it’s possible with our credit scores and an almost repossession to my name that we can move into a new house? A nice house? With real hardwood floors, big windows, a garden. I think so. Actually I know so! I have to have conviction about these things. I’m really into optimism right now. I’m beginning to think my life depends on it. It— my ability to be painfully, irrationally and at times unrealistically hopeful about the beauty that is possible to hold and to have and to give and to experience in this life, our life, under these conditions, under any conditions that might fall on our existence.

Remember the part in the Neapolitan series when Elena was watching her mother walk away and it was a sight that, during childhood, seared itself into her bones: her mother with her limp leg and her crossed eye has settled so deep inside her, in a place where the fear of being punished by the same destiny overtook often and fiercely. There’s something about mothers and daughters specifically. Your own mother being the first other woman you spend a very considerable amount of time with, who you observe very closely from the first time your eyes ever open to the world until the day that they close for good. Or hers close. Whichever comes first. And these inevitable deaths have their hands around my neck. There are so many days I want the chance to live into. There is so much to purify, to redeem, to make right, to make light. And I need to do it in this life. He asked me “do you ever think about these things?”, insinuating that I don’t. That I don’t think about how the past is so tethered to the present and the present entangled with the future and it’s all I do. All I do is think about how all these dots connect. And I feel so responsible and overwhelmed.

"There's nothing on earth like an accident
to put you in touch with time-- time then speaks in all but words, your mother tongue, it croons
you are desired to be one with it
no matter what it takes away. " 

Gwendoline Riley looks eerily like the mother of my husbands two sons, whom I purchased toothpaste and gum parallel to last Sunday. A shock runs directly from my heart to hers, or is it hers to mine? every time we’re in the same room as the other, which isn’t often. Our distaste for one another is this: She feels I took something from her and I feel she took something from me. No one in this family is getting what they want. Everyone has the shitty end of the stick and the better one at the same time. Me, her, Jesse, the child I grew in my belly, the children she grew in hers. No one is the parent they dreamed of being. The family each of us imagined is only that: the family each of us imagined. It doesn’t exist. It’s not here. Anyway, Gwendoline Riley wrote a book called My Phantoms, about the difficult terrain of mothers and daughters, which I plan to read along with A Very Easy Death by Simone De Beauvoir. How I stumbled upon those two titles together feels too close for comfort, hitting way too close to home. But it’s a skin that desperately needs shed so I have to go there. I have to brave it. I want to read another one about a daughter’s ten year experience caring for her dying mother (who she confessed to never loving) but I can’t bring myself to do it. Just like I can’t bring myself to watch the new Jennifer Lawrence movie about postpartum psychosis. It’ll send me into a panic at this time. I need to build up my reserves first, get myself out of this depression, get money, get some clothes that fit me, get resources, get resourceful, return to softness.

And that’s the thing. The thing is this: I have been a sneaky woman, stashing away twenty dollar bills between stacks of Paris Review’s because my soft ears have heard the words “we only have one hundred and fifty dollars left” too many times. That’s $150 for a whole week, sometimes close to two. The nervous system of an already constitutionally sensitive woman, let alone mother, cannot handle two months of that, a year, now almost two years. The soft and sensual woman cries easily, laughs easily, lets go easily. I’m trying to fatten myself up. I’m so cold, my body aches. My limbs are heavy. I’m bogged down. Women need sweet treats, oil to the skin. Letting go of resentments is less rigid and sterile than I imagined. And it doesn’t involve convincing myself that someone is “good” or “worthy of forgiveness”. It has come to: Do I feel soft and sensual? Am I being the woman that I am or am I being a man? The answers to these questions dictate my next moves. My period came in light this month but left me fatigued as if I lost much more blood than I actually had. I nap with The Baby in the afternoon. On the weekend, I chase the kids around the house pretending I’m the kissing monster. It strikes me that Penelope has a laugh and I want to make sure we both experience it more often. I take in that perfect sound, her smile with her left front tooth slightly in front of her right. My favorite set of teeth next to gapped. The other day at the park the swings were wet. A zen grandfather figure approached me with a baby wrapped to his chest. Without saying a word, pulls a stack of folded napkins out of his pocket. Gives me some.

I desire The Capacity. Abundant capacity. Does limitless capacity exist? Is it possible? Is it really? A cup doesn’t expand the more you fill it. Everything just ends up spilling out. I’m spilling out. I feel like my heart is running full speed ahead of me and I can’t get to it. It’s dashing behind the bushes, hopping fences, leaving me. There’s clothes all over the floor, lunch to be made, attention to give. I’m huffing and puffing at the sink, making the sounds of my mother. I could hear her now. I could see her face. And for the first time, instead of turning her into something evil and deficient, I thought: I wonder what she was in need of. She must have been on fire inside. Her heart must have got loose, too. Wandering around, Unprotected. Sweet sugar plum plum, you’re my turtle dove. I know you want something and I know it’s My Love.

M read to me from her book this morning, about the wordless things. How adults have a hard time understanding children because they are purely sense and emotion driven. I asked her if she remembers being a child and she said no. But her book confirmed something I already suspected— that when adults have an emotional reaction to something and they can’t explain it it’s because it came from a time in childhood before there were words. The wordless time— I pray to God that Penelope’s emotional body is protected from the ways I fall short during this wordless time, from the days I can’t muster the enthusiasm. I hope the boys forgive me for not having it in me to run around and pretend to be wounded when sprayed with a water gun. I hope I don’t become a dog in my next life for the way I treat them in this one, pushing them away every time they come near because I can’t tolerate another thing on me, panting for my affection. Or can I? Can some spiritual force, once cultivated, deepen my capacity, my tolerance, my life force?

The opposite of air must obviously be suffocation. I’m suffocating. Suffocation is the name given to a feeling of airlessness. Fortunately, I’m not attached to passing phenomena such as this. I know in twenty minutes I could fall in love again. Tomorrow I could wake up with The Strength. I can feel vital again, spontaneously. The back of my heart, between my shoulder blades is dense. I wish it would crack, give up its position, relax. I know one of these days I’m going to wake up and it won’t hurt but nothing has changed. How does that work? Where does it go? Why does it leave if it always comes back? You know, the Buddhists don’t call earth the enduring realm for nothing. I can meow like a kitty again, wolf like a dog, moo like a cow. Hop little bunny hop hop hop

hop hop hop hop hop hop hop

again

again

again

again

again

again

Enduring describes the action of bearing a difficulty, while endurance describes the capacity to do so. I believe this is a time of cultivating The Capacity. But I/we cannot do it (well) alone. We cannot do it without someone else’s loving hand on our heart (literally at times, figuratively at others). The neighbor across the street reads her Bible every morning. She always says things like “Thanks Be to God!” The neighbor on the right yells at her kids every morning: “GET IN THE CAR!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!” I hear her through the window. This morning when I heard her my body immediately responded in tears. I felt the pain in her heart, the weight of disharmonious motherhood. I said a prayer for all mothers: May all Mothers everywhere be protected from disharmonious circumstances. That is, mothering without a present father, without a balance of feminine and masculine energies, mothering without money, mothering without access to body care, mothering without the feeling of protection, mothering alone the majority of the time, mothering during times of depletion and utter exhaustion, mothering during a war, mothering without food, mothering while getting scratched, bit, hit, mothering all day and at all hours of the night, mothering with tears in our eyes, mothering without other mothers. The injustices go on and on

Rudolf Steiner said that “the nature of a child’s environment and the conduct of the surrounding adults is of paramount importance.” This does something to my insides. When he gave his introductory lectures on Waldorf education in 1924 he was very ill. In the book The Kingdom of Childhood, Christopher Bamford writes in the introduction that “the more his [Steiner’s] physical suffering increased, the more heroic became his concentrated, intense, and at the same time spiritually clarified activity to bring about and safeguard the greatest plentitude of spiritual knowledge in this life on earth.” Suffering is an initiation, a spiritual clarification. There’s something I’m having trouble digesting and I’m letting it lead me to my Heart. The barista asks if I have anything fun planned for the day and I sigh and tell the truth: “just to get through it.” At the park, a mother and son are walking and he’s yelling “I believe in magic! I believe in magic! “ And the mom says “Yes, honey, me too. It’s hard to deny. Magic is everywhere.” Birds were flying overhead. The park welcomes us with an archway of flowers or at least that’s what I see. It’s more a roof with 2 hanging flower baskets on either side. Life still speaks to me. What I am experiencing is part of the Becoming. In the Andes, a fever is a spiritual gift.

The word housewife fails me, as the house is not my husband. In fact, I am most often without my husband in the house. It more so speaks to a time when a woman’s leisure was a result of her husband’s wealth. Now one of the more common reasons women stay home is because it’s more financially feasible to avoid hiring childcare. Another reason is a lack of trustworthy people around to help support the mother so she can, I don’t know, get her basic needs met such as take a shower, eat a good meal, sit in proper prayer, listen to her heart in some quiet.

The Baby smushed raspberries into the carpet for the upteenth time and I lost it. Carpet should be a sin. I sat on the floor with a towel, scrubbed the stain and wept. There are roses that grow in every direction. A mother is this variety of rose.

I'm having a cappuccino right now. If you want to sit on your porch together, I can bring one over for you.

Me and Penelope carried two cappuccinos across the street to the neighbors house where we sat on her porch beside her very well nurtured, very pink fuschias. She brought toys and stuffed animals up from the basement that her kids used to play with when they were small. I told her that I saw her out in her yard early the other morning, picking weeds, watering flowers. I watched her while Penelope watched the birds over the fence. Sandi has children who are grown now and one day I’ll have children who are grown. There’s no wake up slow, quiet morning alone for me. I’ve had it before and I’ll have it again. A morning so easily replicable compared to the days I get to wake up with my baby during the one and only time she’ll be a baby. In the same second that envy flickered in my chest as I watched Sandi have her morning, so, too, did affection for mine. How they aren’t so much mine at all, but ours.

I told Sandi I want to get a vintage percolator and she said that the image of one reminds her of when she was little and her and her mom would walk over to their neighbors house and she’d watch them make coffee on the stove and listen to them talk talk talk. Just like her and I were doing. She told me about her grandmother— how she didn’t become maternal until she became a grandma. She didn’t start making a home until she was old. That she’d bring her fuschias into the garage “to winter them”, is what she called it. A table full of fuschias that she kept alive when the cold outside would have killed them. Her stories reminded me how important the objects in our home are— the ones we interact with each day. It reminded me of something my mom said that broke my heart. When we were walking out of the consignment shop when she came to visit: “Nic, I love so many things in there but I have no money for them. What’s the point of them, anyway? I shouldn’t care about material things.” And I looked at her and I said yes you should, mom. Yes, you should. The objects that delight the spirit inside the repetitiveness of the days are more everlasting and precious than a bar of gold. When I tuck Penelope into our bed with the floral quilt we bought at the swap meet, I get the sense that everything I have was always ultimately meant to be hers. When I see our baby in our house, sleeping in our bed, underneath our covers, interacting with our things, getting her face wiped with our washcloths, it dawns on me how much these everyday objects matter. Today I bought three serving trays I found at the thrift: two for her and I to have breakfast or lunch on outside when I set up a pop up caffe for us in the backyard I started calling “Caffe Penelope”, and the other one for bringing coffee and a treat over to Sandi’s, hoping we’ll get invited back to her porch again. I’m teaching myself to sew and dreaming of the textiles Penelope will carry in her memory and the stories they will compel her to tell over and over again. I’m working on a tablecloth. I’m calling it a table dress. One thing she’ll know about her mother is that she loves to dress a table.

Jesse’s in the mountains in Fresno on a photoshoot for a running brand. He spent the day with one of the other runners yesterday. They found a trail to run through, he kept pace with her, she was fast, he sat by the pool, they went to get tacos. Jealousy must be a thing girls come out of the womb with. Eyes, ears, nose, mouth, jealousy. I can say this because Penelope gets jealous when I give Jesse a kiss or sit on his lap or hold another baby. No one taught her this. It has not been conditioned. This is innate. She simply wants what she likes all for herself. When he told me about his day I wanted to cry but I quickly knew it wasn’t because he was “with a girl”. I wasn’t jealous of her or of them. I was jealous because I wanted to be at the pool. I want to get in the car with him and drive. I want to go. Go. Go with him on a late night grocery run for snacks. Go watch a movie. Go into town. Go. Nowhere fast. Sit with him. Relax. I was on FaceTime with him when they got in the car. No kids in the back. And it looked so weird to me. Like another life I do not know, can barely even fathom anymore. And I want to have a relaxing relationship with my husband but how? When there’s money to be made, food to be cooked, children to tend to. I want the essence of the pool. The symbolism of the pool. Without the pool. I’m writing this sitting on the toilet seat, knowing i won’t be able to finish before being pulled away. And this is the nature of our lives. Consumed, pulled away. I’m writing this like a question and not like an answer. If right now we are consumed and pulled away then what we’re moving towards is a specific emptiness and a pulling in. I miss my Relaxed Husband. I miss Relaxing with My Husband. When I told him this he said he loves me. He loves me so much. How can contentment and yearning be in my heart together at once? I am totally, blissfully exhausted and occupied by motherhood. I am in awe of what I can do and who I am to Penelope. I’m proud of my patience and my presence. I’m proud of her. I’m delighted that there is not one single thing that I miss out on when it comes to watching her grow up. We wake up together, spend the day together, go to sleep together, and do it all over again. I feel so strongly bonded to my girl. And I know that she feels My Love. I feel a great sense of freedom despite only having very scattered 15 minute intervals to do anything for myself because we have a baby who needs me even when she’s asleep. In three days I sewed one, one foot hem. Having to stop and start projects is bothersome but I don’t always get sucked into the botheredness. I have found my Relaxed Heart. Or at least I thought I did. I realized that this new state of mind wasn’t as permanent as it felt like it was if something like my husband being away, enjoying himself without us while our lives resumed like normal, so easily threw me off and into my emotions. These impermanent emotions. How could they grip me like so!

When I meditate on the essence of a Saint, without any religious context or preconceived notions of what is required to be one, the word that comes to me is: Relaxed. Saintliness seems synonymous with a very specific relaxedness. And this relaxation synonymous with a state of mind/heart so serene, spotless, and at peace with The Way of Things. It doesn’t get thrown off. A relaxation that has nothing to do with passivity or idleness or laziness or even happiness. It has nothing, necessarily, to do with leisure or alone time or yoga or meditation. It has everything to do with Everything. To be in Love and in Samsara at the same time. And while I feel like I’ve touched this essense in my mothering, I can lose my contact with it when I feel threatened. For instance, when there’s too much talk about money or there’s no time for Quality Time for the three of us to spend together, let alone an evening out dancing just us two. Eating dinner, looking at each others faces.

Mary Magdalene is also known as Our Lady of Openings. In the springtime she comes to release the waters that were bound during the winter, revitalizing the earth. I’m thinking of saints as translators of the land. To translate the land, you must be close to the land, connected, in intimate relationship with. The land of marriage, the land of our children, the land of our own bodies; psyches.

If you release what is binding you right now, what do you experience?

In Machig’s Last Instructions she wanted her students to remember, more than anything, that the true nature of the mind is empty, empty as a cloudless sky. This doesn’t mean that there’s nothing there. It just means that there’s nothing permanently there. When I release what binds me, I find a Relaxation that doesn’t depend on optimal circumstances or ideal conditions.

For a project my friend is working on, she asked me “what is something you always want to remember?” I said:

that love is the eternal movie playing silently in the background, forever conjoined; never separated from, the theatrics of all of life. In other words: Love is the invisible hand holding life’s very visible hand. It is the constant undercurrent. No matter what performance is being put on in front of me I can access this Love and be moved by it. I keep telling myself: It’s all the same to me… because I’m in Love.

It’s all the same to me— the crying baby, the inevitable arguing between under resourced and possibly under-“ready” new parents, the thrill of witnessing My Baby through all her firsts, waking up to her pointing to the door, saying “keee!” (kitty), her leaning in to kiss me, both of us resting with our lips pressed together for the sweetest few seconds of my life. I smile, she smiles back with her little underbite and all of her five milk teeth showing. Zero dollars in the bank until next paycheck. My body, fatigued from sustaining hers all day and all night. Her growing smarter and more brave, more adventurous and more herself through my breastmilk and my Devotion. Papa’s at work all day. We’re alone and it can be lonely. We watch a bunny hop along the grass and we don’t look away until it’s out of sight because Baby wants to linger awhile, take it all in. And so do I. All of it— because I’m in Love.

On the Friday before, the neighbors house caught fire. I made her chocolate chip cookies and me and the kids brought them over. She’s a single mother, two kids, no family here. She’s made friends with many of the other neighbors. They were all huddled around her house, texting and calling her, letting her know what was happening because she wasn’t home at the time. The sight of all of them touched me. I didn’t get the woman’s number but I told her I’d come check on her tomorrow. Should I make her dinner? What does she need? What does she need me to be? I wondered what I’d need from the women in the surrounding houses if I was her and it dawned on me that… I am her. Her and I share the need of the presence, the attentiveness and the care of the women that occupy the houses that surround our own. She needs me to be what I am: a woman; mother; neighbor. And what we need is what all families need: for us to really be these things, not only in our own marriages and for the children we birthed but to care for all beings as though we all share one mother. She doesn’t need cookies. She needs me to offer to watch her kids, help her clear her house of the debris, gather any salvageable remains, give her— this person whom I don’t even know— some clothes, and to not stop thinking about her as the days since the fire turn into weeks and then months. This incident reminds me vividly of early postpartum— the frequent abundance of texts and calls, visitors in and out that whole first week. People came over who I’ve never spent time with prior to having a baby. These people, who didn’t know me, made me food— one of the most loving things anyone could ever do. And after that first week, they were gone. Vanished.

What this past year has so clearly shown me is what has become my most earnest desire: for the people around me to be more like circles, arms making O shapes around each others bodies, each others children, around bowls of food, hands gathering ingredients, preparing meals, inviting the other in, palms open as a nonverbal offering; no asking required. No “let me know if I can help.” Just help. Unfortunately for families, the world is made of mostly vertical lines, eyes fixed straight ahead, bodies moving towards a center that one single self is placed in, separated off from the whole; all these individual quests.

I want to be a Saint. After reading Penelope Loom’s piece on Moroccan Matriarchs, I have a vision held firmly in my mind: the smell of coffee coming from the kitchen every morning, the way my grandmother’s house smells all day, especially near the sink where coffee grounds are spun through the garbage disposal. I want my hands to be warm, my feet and my belly, too because then I’ll know my Blood is circulating well, that I have a lot of it to keep me strong, to keep me going, to make our home a warm place and to keep my maternal well continuously flowing. I want to be a web. The web that strings us all together like silk.

I am so tired. I feel as though I have not slept in days.

I will return to these over and over and over until I get it right:

Lessons from Moroccan Matriarchs part 1

part 2

I waited all week to go to the caffe to order un cappuccino e un cornetto because that’s what I did last Sunday with my Husband and Our Baby and it was infinitely more satisfying with the both of them than with one of them or none of them. Today, Sunday, has come. And we’re not going. We have $50 in the bank plus another $30 ensconced somewhere else and I might have 2 leftover from my birthday. And Jesse had to wash our cars and I needed to wash the baby and prepare the pie crust for the pissaladière that’s going to go with the pasta I’m making for dinner later. We said our weekly “I only have the weekend to do the things I need/want to do’s”, and between trying to squeeze in time to clean work boots (him) and writing this (me), Penelope needed her midday controra. It’s 2pm now. Every day since I turned 30 (April 17th), I’ve warmed water for tea, put a leftover pastry on a small plate, and went outside in the one patch of sun to release my toes and fingers from the cold that’s seized my bloods flow to them. The first taste of Sugar that’s touched my daughter’s tongue was the chocolate birthday cake that Jesse made for me. She sat on my lap and we ate and she tasted it with more than her mouth. I watched it. I felt it, her soul downloading the whole thing— the candles, the cutting, the sharing, the plate, then the taste. These are the things I hope she retains from going about her days with me: the pleasure of lingering at a dinner table strewn with empty glasses, crumb splattered plates, long after the food has been eaten, the appreciation of honey on a blue spoon in a pink mug holding tea, a brownie from the night before shared the next afternoon. I hope that she’s guided by Romance, that celebration is her muse, that if she does it (eat) with joy in her heart, she will be rewarded and if she does it with fear, she will be rewarded but in a roundabout way, and if she does it (eat/do the dishes/clean the kitchen/ go to sleep) with anger or hatred or grief the reward cannot come until her heart/mind remembers its true nature: love.

In this tenth month of motherhood, I’ve become enchanted. I am calm and even the way I march out of the house with the baby in my arm, pie dough stuck to my fingers, throwing my arms up at my husband asking him why he went out when I’m in the middle of something and she wants to be held and he throws his arms back up at me, his remark: “welp, I guess I won’t get anything done today” and I remind him that it’s not even 9am and he says “…I know” is an underrated romance, an intimacy rarely glorified but, one can argue, loving in its own way, meaningful at the very least, infuriating for sure but so telling of a closeness reserved only for The Ones You Live Life With. We moved. I’m no longer a monk on a mountain in the woods, where we resided for five months. Me and Penelope walk to the river. We walk to the yarn store weekly so I can ask the shop owner to help me with the next step of my knitting project. I am still confused and perplexed by the process of combining needle with thread. She has two teenage boys who she speaks of adoringly. We always end up talking about being mothers. She said “ Oh I remember the constant touching. My husband would get home and he’s very affectionate and I love him and I couldn’t handle it— the touching on top off already too much touching.” She said jokingly, “I told him I’m sorry you married me.” Me and P go get a scone and we watch people. One of my favorite things about my daughter is she can sit anywhere with me and watch people. We go to the farm store for lunch and I slice a pear for her with a plastic knife and we sit at a picnic table and we (I) eat and (she) throws food. I met two of our neighbors. One, a 70 year old woman who said she’d love to play grandma to Penelope and another one who lives in the blue house on the corner. She stays home with her two girls and wants to have coffee and walk to the library on Monday for family reading time. I bought green glitter eyeliner on my birthday. I put it on along with my silver hoops, a beaded necklace, a mix of mine and my husbands rings. We put a blanket out and read in the front yard, pull blades of grass out of the ground, have a snack in the back and put rocks into a bucket and then take them out. Put them in, take them out. In, out, in, out, in, out.

As I type this, the question I came to ask found its answer. The question was: With less than $100 to work with this week until I get paid on Thursday, will I be happy sans scone, sans cappuccino? I worry about how we’ll fill our time, what we’ll do, where we’ll go if I can’t buy anything. But it appears I’ve found great joy in.. everything. Laying down with her for her naps has gone from an annoying obligation to my own controra, a magical two hours for rest in the middle of the day. I read, I gaze out the window and catch a flurry of petals falling off the tree. Yes, petals. I think about texting my husband to thank him sincerely for getting up, putting his boots on, going to work all day every day so I can stay with our sweet P and live our version of the Italian daydream. I didn’t text him but I told him after dinner today.

I’m increasingly interested in my ancestry, what my mothers mothers mother made, what she ate. At the start of this month I was bleeding out of my butt (hemorrhoids), hated my vagina (candida galore) and was so so sad, surviving off of meat and veggies, which is delicious but absolutely soul crushing when it’s all you let yourself eat, all in the name of healing. Meanwhile, my ancestry is made of espresso, cannolis, spaghetti, ricotta, pesto, lemons, focaccia, gathering. And I want Penelope to know these things, how to regard them, how to cherish the process of making food, setting the table, eating with care and happiness. I want her to feel close to her matrilineal line, close to me, close to the essence of the women she came from who neither of us has ever met but know in our Blood. I care about the past and reclaiming our heritage, rewriting the story, placing God in the center of the family in the least religious, most spiritual way. Food is our entrance into the past. Food and language. I’m teaching myself Italian and speaking to Penelope in the words I know. But when I ask my grandmother about our ancestry, she speaks only of food. Only a month ago did she tell me about her postpartum, how in the hospital the doctors gave her something to stop her milk as soon as it started flowing so her child(ren) can be formula fed. That’s what she wanted because that’s what everyone was doing and it makes my whole body clench. As far as I know, there are no midwives, no medicine women or gardeners in our family. Perhaps, I’m the first and why I feel so compelled to guard these practices with my life.

So what will we do this week? What we do every week: wake up, add lemon to warm water, drink water, breastfeed, make breakfast, eat, put on music, dance, breastfeed, stretch, breastfeed, nap. It’s hard to record what we do in a day because, well, maybe we’re not doing anything at all. We are simply being alive together, moving about the house, saying good morning and waving hello to all the living things outside, sitting, walking, swaying, holding, soothing, talking, cooking, eating, kissing, running fingers through hair, singing, drifting, sleeping, chopping, sauteing, serving, washing, folding, breathing, crying, laughing, sighing, embracing.

Some out of the ordinary things, though: I plan on walking to the post office to change our address, walking to the library and asking if they have any books by Deborah Levy or Louise Rosenblatt or the book, Martyr! by Kaveh Akbar. On the first Thursday of every month, residents get into the art museum for free. I’m gonna take The Baby. There’s a gorgeous exhibition happening right now of Suchitra Mattai’s work, titled she walked in reverse and found their songs, which is centered around imagining new futures by unweaving stories of the past. When I read the following excerpt on the SAM website I couldn’t believe how timely it will be to go witness the result of someone who has done so much lineage/memory mapping right as I am embarking on my own weaving of all that is embedded in my cellular, matrilineal, and cultural memory to my present, and seeing her intricate, highly skilled textile work just as I have begun learning to knit and sew. Her work “points to the ways in which peering back can help us find our place in the world…. also illustrating slippages between past and present, reminding us that memory is subjective and that histories can—and should—be rewritten.”

mix the yolks, cream, mascarpone, pecorino and lemon in a mixing bowl, whisking well to remove any lumps. Add the butter and place the bowl over your pan of boiling pasta, to gently warm the sauce, or in a nearby warm place.

I like this instruction from today’s Pasta recipe. Locate a warm place. Warm the sauce there. I hope you treat yourself and those you love this sweetly this week <3

I didn’t get a chance to finish writing this yesterday and I can’t devote too much of me to it today. So here it is, unfinished. I presume many future letters will be incomplete, too. I don’t worry. It always all comes together eventually. Ciao for now

Here is a compilation of the voice memos I recorded throughout January that helped me process the very uncharted territory of month seven of being Penelope’s mom. This month had me thinking about the pain of all mothers since the beginning of time. The aching back and the monthly recurring headache, the repeating days, “the steady rhythm of forever in o…

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and pretend i’m monastic

pleased eating spoonfuls of rice straight from the pot

fill my cup with dried leaves

empty, then fill again

e m p t y e m p t y e m p t y

happy to be nobody

to anybody (except to the two that chose me)

it’s hard to sleep at night

when you’re at the mercy of someone else’s

sleep and wake cycles

i close my eyes and thoughts arise

and swirl and feed off each other

i stop them with an image of an empty bowl

i locate the space between my organs

i don’t care about anything (until morning)

“DON’T THINK [about the past]

DON’T CONCEIVE [any present]

DON’T FANTASIZE [about the future]

DON’T MEDITATE [on the emptiness of phenomena and of mind]

DON’T ANALYZE [an object or subject]

But leave the mind in its natural state”

i fall asleep for 45 minutes at a time

a new series of weekly guided meditations inspired by Tibetan Buddhist teachings, designed for those who don’t have a lot of time to tend to themselves and are really craving care. They’ll be short n sweet, between 5-20 minutes long and will serve as a reminder to turn our minds and hearts to the Dharma, connect to our inner Mother Nature and become mor…

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You see a chair

You see a man sanding a chair

Perhaps you see a beautiful man, sanding a chair, prepping it for paint

You see a (insert adjective) man, a Husband, a Father, a Buddhist, a Lover of God.

You see _________ (fill in the blank).

You can imagine his family. They’re watching him. In awe and adoration.

You see a chair

You don’t see the significance of the chair, why it’s important, what it symbolizes, what it means for us to have it

Not pictured is the series of events that lead to the acquisition of the chair

Not pictured is the series of events that transpired after its acquisition

You see a man.

A chair.

I see the hands of the one I love breaking out in an an inflamed rash. Itchy and red from being soaked in chemical laden water all day

I see him wearing the soot and grime that accumulates on windows and balconies as if he rolled in it on purpose, scraped it off the buildings, smeared it on himself

As if it was a tonglen meditation— breathing in the pollution of the world knowing he could transform it. He could make it good. He could take the suffering away and in the morning that’s what he set out to do. He washed the rich peoples windows so they could have a clear view of the ocean, and at night, scrubbed plates so other people with money could eat. He became the dust, the leftovers, the spoon, the pot, the soap, the water.

He took the last of his money, moved us from California to Washington to be closer to his sons whose mother grants him permission to see them only as she pleases, which is rarely.

I see a family living paycheck to paycheck, what that does to their health, their overall mood. Being back at zero, back at zero, back at zero. Over and over again

I see my Husband on the couch, filling out countless job applications, being offered the bare minimum wage. He works now, in the water still, but this time it’s rain. I feel the weight, the ache in my chest, from only seeing him for maybe two hours a day. I see what he means when he tells me I don’t understand the weight on a man’s shoulders. How one can work their days away and have almost nothing to show for it. I see the way the injustices bury him, put him in the ground before God does.

I see the heartbreak of a good papa, a never gonna stop trying papa, to have boys and not have access to them. Or them, to him.

I see myself. Post birth. New baby on my chest, no one coming to lay with us. Jesse always leaving. Me crying every time the door closed behind him. I see the scar on my belly. I feel mad at him. So mad. I feel mad. I feel mad. I feel mad

You see a chair.

I see how not having money results in loss of affection, loss of health, diminished vitality.

I see a body that needs touched, needs healing hands laid lovingly on skin.

I see a body desperate for new movement, a change in posture, in position.

But yoga in the West is a luxury only certain people have access to. Health is a luxury only certain people can have.

You see a chair. I see my baby.

My sweet baby, sleeping, reaching with closed eyes for more milk, waking and wanting me near.

I want him near us but work takes him. The mother of his sons takes him— his time, his attention, his presence, his peace, his patience, his confidence, his security, his boys, his hope. And I’m mad! I’m mad at her. I’m mad at her for the panic attack she caused him, the pain in his chest so severe he couldn’t rest. He fell asleep on the couch that night. I woke at 1am, went out to the family room careful not to scare him, placed my hand on his chest to make sure he was still alive, that it was, in fact, a panic attack and not a heart attack. I did not stay mad at her for long, though, because I know it would amuse her to know she’s made me suffer.

You see a chair and I see the desire for Wisdom, for Clarity, for Truth to wash over us. To wash over those who want to see us suffer, who are suffering.

I see a beautiful future.

I see a new foundation being laid.

I see the man I married, who I vowed (and vow) to love through sickness and in health, for richer or poorer, to hold and to cherish. And I mean it.

I see a graceful mother in me.

I see a forgiving wife.

I see an everlasting love.

I see us, able to breathe easy

We talk about changing the language we use when discussing these topics with friends and family so as to not perpetuate bias or take sides and assume fault without considering all truths (his / hers / ultimate)

Jesse speaks on the importance of present fathers and what they give their children that a mother cannot and why we need both, as well as how a fatherless household affects a child.

We talk about not fighting in terms of wanting to win something for the self, but instead fighting for the wellbeing of the children. We discuss why fathers are often overlooked and their child’s relationship with them is under protected.

It’s been a long and exhausting road we’ve been on. Lots of suffering, lots of living the karma of our actions, panic attacks, tears, time spent, time stolen. If you could offer any funds at all, we could really use it. All we have is each other, which is a lot, but we need community.

Here is the link to gofundme to donate: protect father/child relationships

If you can’t donate, pray.

<3

This past Saturday we celebrated our sweet little Lucy Lou, lil Georgina Gorgina Apple Bottom Gina, little Lou Goblin, little babalucylucylucylucylou, my honey bonita, our baby Penelope being here for six months. That means it’s been half a year of being parents together, traversing the new land of our relationship, discovering new ways of communication, better language, better listening, better tending to and holding. It was important to me that we not only celebrate her, but we celebrate us, as it feels like a symbolic time— halfway to an entire year.

A lot got rearranged during the passage of birth (really even as far back as during pregnancy) and over the last six months of me being a new mom and Jesse being a parent with me, after having been a parent with somebody else already. I wanted to honor the conflicts that we resolved with time and with patience and returning to the same disagreements over and over again before coming to even an inkling of understanding. I wanted to honor how much has been alchemized, the ignorance that we dispelled together, the Wisdom that we distilled from our experience. I feel more in love with him than ever. I feel even more here with him than ever. I feel very together after many months of not. The six month mark feels like a good time for reflection. What has worked well for us? What do we not want to carry into the next six months? What do we think the other has done well? What would we like to see each other embody more of for the remainder of our daughters first year? I wanted to ask each other these questions. I wanted to get dressed up just to eat dinner at the kitchen table. I wanted to make a big deal out the day but I began not feeling well. I ended up, instead, with a bellyache in the bathtub, taking my first bath since having a baby.

We still celebrated. We went to the local farm store and bought pasta, chocolate, and wine. We got 5 pounds of tomatoes and spent the afternoon simmering the sauce. It’s the day our baby gets to experience food for the first time so I wanted to eat something special in honor of being a human who not only needs to eat to stay alive but gets to enjoy the sensation of taste. I made Penelope chicken meat stock and gave her some teaspoons of it throughout the day.

Preparing baby’s first foods is a celebration of incarnating into a human body, which, in Buddhism is the ultimate rebirth because it’s the only realm you can get enlightened in. When I was pregnant Jesse and I would sit in meditation with a Buddhist sangha on Sunday evenings and at the end we’d sing a song called Faithful Fortuate Student, in Sanskrit and the lyrics: tob ka mi yi lü ten (the human body is difficult to obtain) mitag tob bab leb tse (when impermanence suddenly descends,) chi dö ding chen é yö (will you be confident in the face of death?) when sung altogether, always made me weepy. I thought of my baby— how she was becoming a human being inside of me. And if all goes well at the time of birth, she will be here. Giving a child food for the first time feels like one of the most intimate things we can do: nourish life. To feed another is to protect each other. I feel the same way about making breakfast for my husband and I. It’s not merely to eat to stave off hunger, it’s “here, eat because your life, to me, is worth taking care of.”

In Chinese Medicine the two main organs responsible for digestion are the Spleen and the Stomach. These organs belong to the the earth element, which makes sense because to eat is very earth oriented. It grounds us to this realm. A healthy spleen keeps the blood moving through the vessels, it’s Qi keeps our organs in place. The spiritual aspect of the Spleen is the Intellect (Yi), so you could say that a healthy spleen (i.e optimal digestion) equals a healthy mindstream. The earth element is symbolic of the archetypical mother: our first source of nourishment. I started researching how to start baby on solids a few months before it was time to give her food. I wanted to have a plan. It’s something I never thought about prior to having a baby. What do you give them? How much? How often? Kate Pope (@wildnutritionist), on Instagram is a great resource for starting baby on solids using the gaps diet. It’s the most gentle and nutritive way to prime their developing digestive systems and nourish their brains. She has courses on her website full of guidance and recipes on how to make ferments and meat stock and other microbiome building foods. If I could afford it, I’d take them all. But I can’t, so I spent the morning screenshotting any information pertaining to first foods from her Instagram highlights and left the rest to mama’s intuition. I sat on the floor doing this while Penelope climbed all over me and I thought of the responsibilities we innately assume. Jesse spends the morning applying for new jobs, or spends the night working and brings home food, or makes calls to the mechanic to get the car fixed, while my physiology is wired to nourish— that is, to cook, to research the best ways to feed my baby, to make the grocery list so papa could carry out the duties he is wired to do.

We cannot mother from a masculine framework, which the world is led by and I think it’s one of the reasons mothers end up feeling angry postpartum.. that we don’t get to do. Do do do do do. Motherhood requires a lot of slowness.. slowly lift the spoon to baby’s mouth, slowly transition her from chest to bed so you can use the bathroom, spend the days moving in slow circles around the house, and lots of waiting… waiting for water to boil, waiting for the meat to cook, waiting for the baby to fall asleep, to wake up, waiting for papa to get home, waiting for three months to turn into six months because God, those early days were hard. So hard. We are the comforters, the ones who help baby digest their life and their sustenance. We are the authority when it comes to feeding our children. And nature seems to agree given the proof of the roles we innately take on, without deliberation or divvying up tasks and without any discussion, we assume our position and are moved by the heart.

That’s all for now. May all beings be fed.

In the midst of all the anxiety, uneasiness, and stress, I had an epiphany while Jesse was at work the other night. I was reading the kids a story to wind down before bed. We were sitting on the couch. Penelope was calm and lounging in my lap. Geronimo was sitting beside me, asking questions about the characters in the book, making up different scenarios for them to live other than the one the story was telling. We closed the book and this feeling washed over me in a quick flash. A dream feeling, the kind you only get when you’re imagining the best things in the world happening to you. But it was real, because I was right there in it. I dreamt of this moment, finally being in Washington near Jesse’s two boys, hanging out on the couch with the kids, the way families do. Remember growing up and everyone being in the family room? I suppose it’s called that for a reason. And it was just so sweet. To feel it all here now. When the feeling left it didn't completely go. I can still access it. If I made all this happen for myself— making a baby with the one I love, spending my days taking good care of her, moving from California to Washington, living in a quiet house in the woods, sitting on the couch reading to the children— then we can keep making things happen. Things can get even better. We can have ease. We can have financial stability. We can dance. We can be comfortable. Everything is here. And it’s okay when it’s not perfect. We keep being blessed.

So, for December’s meditation I will be rejoicing in the dreams I am currently living. How once upon a time they existed only as a longing, a fantastic place for my mind to go and imagine myself. The future is here and I’m living a lot of the blessings I asked to receive. I think that the part we miss while dreaming, perhaps, is the ability to actually embody the person you envision, being able to meet ourselves at the same energetic frequency of our dreams when they arrive. Does this make sense? I invite you, dear human, to do the same with me. If everything is on fire around you, what is one thing that feels like water? And how can I/you/we act, speak, respond, play, fight in such a way that honors the truth of who we are WHILE building a virtuous, fruitful, relaxed future, a Buddha Paradise, for ourselves, the children, and the happiness of all? How can we be what we need to be to get the things we want? This is what I’m pondering and experimenting with.

Sigh. Thank you, God. May we keep going. May we move different in the ways we need to. May we rejoice, often.

verses are tendrils that try to cling to me

while I sit in the sandpit pouring scoops of sand

through a seive

the abstraction of meaning has its claws in, desperate

for a place in my body, a way of trying to restructure

the present all the time

the sand forms a curving line

an upturned bucket a perfect circle, to the words

“again, again, again”

the light of the poem moves out of me like the passing

sun

it is gone, again, another verse, chapter, falls through

fingers, and I’m here not even trying to get it back, as

my boy laughs again and the moon keeps us up later

than usual and cheese drips off our pizza and

everything goes blank, again

fizzes with anxiety or mineral water, again, and I let it

fall through the cracks, again, again

a steady rhythm of forever in our chests as I build

paper cranes on the floor, set them on the bookshelf

natural shapes collide into a migraine

the desire to shift into asana turns into the desire to shift

into shikantaza / just sitting / to be here

fold fold fold like a paper crane or one of those boxes

where there are

answers on every angle

an open limbic limerick, a puzzle of fingers and toes

making

natural shapes drifting

beneath the waves and folding like a paper bird. in water

the full moon gone a cosmic hangover in the body

which welcomes emptiness

stills to it

a paper bird folding falling in the water

Squeeze the skin of shoulder firmly, upwards, with opposite hand

Rotate neck in circle

Baby hums herself to sleep, throws her face into my arm

10 more days of sun

The forecast where we’re going is infinite rain

How come the blues are beautiful when Labi Siffre sings of them?

Some heartache is more honorable than others?

How come when I cry I’m no longer a woman

I’m your baby and the last thing I want is to be left alone

In joy!