Category Archives: Sam

Burn Baby Burn

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It’s pretty hard to explain how or why a white girl growing up in a small farming community in Oregon loved Donna Summer so much, but from the first time those eighth grade, older and much cooler girls pulled the record player out into the hallway during lunch and played “On The Radio,” I was in love with the Queen of Disco.

There was something naughty about her, but innocent at the same time. She had a big voice, and you could hear the joy there, the sense of fun and of self and of pain–it was riveting, and so beautiful. She was everything I wanted to be, but didn’t even dare hope, certainly didn’t wish out loud. But I had so many private dance parties in my room, imagining being as big and as beautiful as she was, believing for at least as long as the song lasted that it was possible. At ten years old, she sang the magical and secret soundtrack to my dreams.

It made me so sad today to find out she’d passed. She was only 63, and apparently battling cancer, (stupid cancer).

 

I already felt off kilter today. Sam was fussy last night, woke me up around 2 am licking his nose and doing this weird swallowing/gagging thing, so I lay awake on the edge of the bed, leaning close so I could hear him breathe, and stayed like that, tense and attentive, until the alarm went off at 4:30 am. I tried to practice tonglen, tried not to panic but when I’m worried and it’s dark I almost can’t stop myself, felt sick to my stomach, took deep breaths, didn’t fall back asleep even when he did, and wondered for the millionth time how moms do it.

And Hewlett Gulch, one of my favorite places to hike, is on fire, growing from 900 acres to almost 6000 over a single, windy night. On and off through the past few days, the smoke has blown in to town, making the nearness of the fire clear. I don’t think humans can smell fire, unless maybe it’s a campfire, and not feel fear, that deep and old anxiety that lives in our DNA, that panic, that instinct to run for our lives.

It’s only my second day of vacation, and I’m already giving myself a hard time. I made a list of what needed to get done this summer, what I wanted to do, called it my “summer mondo beyondo list” and wrote it on a piece of scratch paper with the picture of a baby bunny on the back to dispel any yucky to-do list mojo it might generate, but it didn’t really work. I kept adding to the list until I’d filled one whole side of the paper, every inch of space, and looking at it was making me sad, making me feel like I wouldn’t have a vacation at all, but also I know this is a stage, a transition I have to go through. I knew it would happen. It most likely will take me two weeks to settle in, to let go.


In a guest post on Kind Over Matter, Angel Sullivan shares this poem:

daily forays into the tangled undergrowth of my mind.
slogging through the muck
tripping
falling
up again
over and over
finally (finally!) recognizing that it’s time to set divine fire to the whole damn thing and watch it
burn baby burn

I feel myself standing in this moment, tired and afraid, knowing that it’s time.

Disco inferno…

I remember

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It’s been a rough, emotional week. I love many people who are actively suffering, confused, hurt, angry, and who can’t see their way out, can’t seem to get unstuck.

As someone who wants to help, to serve, it is incredibly painful to not be able to do anything, to not be able to fix it, to know that I can’t save them.

Even worse is that I can’t simply stand by and watch, untouched. Their pain, their poison seeps into me, into my porous heart, and I suffer too. I try to care for myself, but my chest and stomach cramp and ache, my heart and head hurt, I can’t sleep, and my right eye twitches for an entire day.

And within the past 24 hours, we’ve had difficulties with our boys. We discovered that Sam has Discoid Lupus Erythematosus, (a benign form of systemic lupus, a form of autoimmune disease, which manifests as loss of pigment on his nose, and dry, irritated, raw spots), and Dexter sprained his tail, (Limber tail syndrome, or acute caudal myopathy, a disorder of the muscles in the tail, usually affecting working dogs, also known as Cold Water Tail, Broken Tail, Dead Tail or Broken Wag).

It makes me so sad to see either of them hurt, but the real issue is that recognition of their pain leads to the realization, the remembering that they are mortal–some day they will die, and I will lose them. Our direct relationship, our time together is limited, we are impermanent.

And then there is another remembering, of those already gone and of the loss of them. Two years ago, Kelly was sent home from the hospital and those of us who loved her knew that the end was coming. We entered an awful season of waiting. It only lasted a few days, but it was also eternal, and in so many ways, it’s still happening.

Then and now, there is something so bizarre about the new life of Spring, the return to green, the flowering, the soft earth, the clear blue sky, the bird songs and baby animals, the soft warm new body of the whole thing in contrast with the blackness, the blindness of loss, the grief, the wailing and crying and disbelief, the emptiness, the suffering, the wreck and the broken, the raw of the rest.

That is life though, isn’t it? The horrific brutality and the precious brilliance. A cat smashed on the road, twisted, broken, someone’s lost soft love, and a butterfly resting on a flower, its wings folding and unfolding as it feeds, as it floats from bloom to bloom, drawn by their scent and their sweetness. There is bad in the world, life is brutal, and there is good in the world, life is beautiful–Life is precious, because it is both beautiful and brutal.

I remember…