Sideways Scribbled

Well guys I don't know much but I do know that when you've had diarrhea for four weeks and then for three days you have what looks like your body's heroic attempt to form a soft serve chocolate ice cream poop you look at it and you are damn proud.

Flush away potential colon cancer lets fight a better fight than the toilet fight.

Other than the south end of me, life is pretty fucking amazing. I'm typing in my little daughter's room because it is the only one with sun at this last drops of the light time of day and there are two dogs at my feet lying in the same direction shape like furry synchronized croissant. From this room you can see through the big bedroom out across the pool to the horses gently swishing tails and eating hay lazily in dappled light and I'm in a fucking french painting.

I was at the shrink which I never want to do and this week we were talking about not carrying any more heavy stones around, like what is in me that I've been hefting for years that I maybe don't need anymore? Apparently carrying around sadness and clutching pain can an eternal internal burden. 

I was riding around the lake yesterday with two horses and two dogs and just me and I was thinking what the actual efff, I can throw away stuff?? My mom never did. I mean she did keep a tidy house, we moved a bunch so we had only a core bundle of stuff, but emotionally she had a wide load. 

We can throw stuff away that we don't need

whaaaat

So I don't know if it was the ride around the lake which I then did again today because when I went to bed that night I felt actually happy and I don't know if it was the sun or the idea of a lighter life but all these weeks with the shrink I really thought I was doing it for her, I mean she needs a paycheck and then I thought wait a minute I think I can help myself here, too. In this little space where I control everything, she said. It was amazing, to consider.

The creek looked bigger to me. The house seems bigger. Also it is the losing of children, this is a strange thing, watching a movie with B at night and no one is interrupting us with a project or  screaming excitement or tears. Of course that is the tragic part of 25 years with chaos and kids. The kids are the meaning of everything. After one month we are slowly breathing again. No one needs a driver's test. No one is hiding in their room on the internet. No one familiar is stomping through the house. This is the tragedy.

But it is quiet and the light is filtering in like it must have been all these years and busy me didn't have a minute to see it. Yesterday I put a chair outside in the barnyard and sat down and watched the chickens and slowly my mind stopped ravelling. Unravelling instead like loose spaghetti on a cheap italian tablecloth. Meriwether the intermittent devil babyhorse came over and stood right next to me and I scratched him. Then when I stopped scratching him he still stayed and rested his head on my head. Then his head got so heavy he rested his nose on my shoulder and fell asleep. He stood there sleeping on me for five minutes. 

Retired from active hands on motherhood is a little studied Avengers universe. It's only been a month. There are yawning spans of time that seem like silent film (mostly comedies). There is writing to be edited and done. The garage is looking workable but plenty more hours to be done. But I can open cabinets in there.  And then there's me. Me and my rocks. Interior rock pile. The ones inside that I could throw away and watch the huge splash. They're rumbling and I'm putting a curious ear cone down to hear them. The shrink says it doesn't matter when you finally get to your rocks. There is no rush. She says every time you catch a fish, it's fresh.

Having a minute to gather your thoughts without the welfare of three lovely human beings looming in the forefront of your mind is a confusing, hot summer lake vacation. And there is so much writing in the garage. In boxes I am finding envelopes and scrap paper with sideways scribbled notes from scripts I was working on with baby Bess's infant pen doodling all over it and it looks like crazy. Like to hear dialogue and scratch it down on crinkled paper with a baby in your lap that's crazy. There's an urgency to writing. And mothering. Looks crazy.

Looking back from this dog spot on the bed, shhh    it is crazy

lordy mordy

Can we talk about Mordy for a second.

First of all I thought his name was Levi. Which was way cooler. But then I found out it was first name Mordachai  last name Levi wait maybe I should change this name so it's not rude ok so his name is Mordy LeviWranglerjeans.

Here's how Mordy came about. I put an ad on FB marketplace because that's where the kids say is a better place to sell things these days. Apparently Craigslist is strictly for daterape and murderers (I have an ad there too, always good to keep your friday night options open.) 

Every few years I get bored and put an ad up to find some paying riders to go along with me on an occasional ride, since I ride every day. So I put this ad on FB marketplace and apparently I haven't priced anything out in the world since 1972 because my prices were so low I got 6000 views and 40,000 messages. So I took that ad down and upped my price and put it back up (which I have now done three more times btw until I got the price righter) and on one of those mid priced ads I got Mordy.

Mordy is a doughy curly haired superjew like the kosher kind with a huge inky black mercedes the big boxy kind which Nathan says is a G wagon and which I say is A Big Black Car. Mordy has a kind face though, like the face of a nine year old trick or treater in a mommade bad ghost costume. So I forgive Mordy's flagrant car and say wait, look at his ultrasmooth skin, maybe he's cool.

I always have new riders meet me at the school cause I don't like people at my house and Mordy signs the waiver and gets on and lemme say I usually only see women, Kurt was the only dude I really rode with. There was one fireman one time. But really if you wanna do trail, you wanna go with Kurt.

Mordy is no Kurt. 

Mordy was talking about his 700 dollar boots. I was like  three hundred and fifty EACH?? He was telling me they will last a lifetime. Who wants a lifetime with one kinda boot? I only want a vacuum for a lifetime, the rest of the stuff I like to switch out every now and then.

Mordy also talked about his 2000 dollar dog, which happened to be the breed of my childhood dog, German Shorthair Pointer, so I was genuinely interested in this dog. He also said his family recently bought 60 acres in Santa Maria to start a ranch.

Ok so money aside, the guy is not funny. I sat on the horses in the creek, my beloved church-like creek with him like I did with Kurt so many times where Kurt and I sat and listened to water and only talked about very important things like do you think John Ritter ever hooked up with Suzanne Somers and why doesn't spray cheese taste as good as it used to

With Mordy it was quiet in the jungle where we were surrounded by trees and water and I heard dogs barking in the woods and I said I bet it's a convict on the run and those are the bloodhounds after him and Mordy looked at me kind of frozen like his imagination was turned down real low

and then I heard the low hum of his brain and I realized I'd been disconnected

and my beloved creek held its breath and felt sorry for me. Put a leafy hand on my shoulder in co- misery.

That's pretty much how it was the whole ride. It felt like I was riding with the head of HR of a small really boring business. He asked alot of questions but then ultimately it was about how his tshirt was just a little too snug to be attractive for me to have to look at while riding behind him on horseback. I should tell him gently. But hopefully I don't ever have to see him again.

But then he's decided that riding is his new favorite thing and he wants to ride all the time and he can't really ride, ps, and also he's not all that interesting in learning how. He just wants to be doing something outside so I might suggest he try kites or perhaps a nice gloved rock wall.

Anyway, he wanted to come back and take a lesson this time, and I had just had two completely cheerful and goofy girls come out to take a lesson at my house, and they paid 50 bucks each (back at my original low prices) and since I didn't want Mordy to come back I said oh well lessons are 60 and the trail ride is 40 so it's 100 bucks for an hour and a half and he just sent me the money right then like it was for Fruit Roll Ups.

Damn.

So Mordy came back to my HOUSE the next (and hopefully last) time yesterday. He said can I bring my dog she's really well trained  I was like um

how is she with chickens he's like oh she's perfect I had a bunch of chickens she's great

so I put my chickens away. Of course. Which sucks for the chickens who looked at me like they were in The Green Mile locked up but I missed one white chicken who I didn't see on the nest at the time and this will play into the drama later.

Mordy shows up with his fatass shinyblackhole car and parks right in the driveway like taking it all up like it is like four cars wide. Then he brings his dog in who immediately takes off running around like an 8 year old at Disneyland and yes it's a beautiful dog, I can definitely see like 700 dollars worth of beauty there I don't know about the full 2000. This guy came for a lesson so I started teaching him how to catch the horse and groom the horse and he's really not paying any attention and my dogs are staring at his spazzy dog like wtf is this guy and I'm just trying to get us out of there quick. This is like bad speed dating where you already know you never want to see this guy again.

So I get him and his dog out of there, on the horse, we're heading to my normal neighborhood ride and his dog is running ahead along the busy street but I actually am interested to see if 2k dogs splatter the same as one dollar dogs, but she does stop at intersections so I give up worrying about the dumb dog because my real goal is to keep the guy on the back of the horse safely til we get all the way back. 

This ride he talks first about his dead strict israeli grandfather and then about his business building ADUs which is like apartments you add onto your house to rent out to people. He has a whole company and he's the guy who just sets up the build and then other people do it while he goes riding and buys dogs and boots. I don't know what to talk to him about so I just stick to the jewish I know and we talk aLOT about matzah ball soup. I just think about every meal I've eaten at passover and hanukkah and just keep him talking about that and the weird thing real jews do on saturdays like not touch electricity or whatever and I act interested in why that's a thing.

Meanwhile his dog is running free like Amanda Knox after she got out of italian prison and I say to him gently well you know if there's another horse on the trail I always get off my horse and grab my dog in case their horse is scared of dogs and he's like oh she's fine I don't even OWN a LEASH and I'm like that's really cool but actually it's trail etiquette to protect the other riders so in case someone's horse would flip out by your dog running out of the bushes right in front of them like your dog did just then while you were not paying any attention to my horse you are sitting on currently and you could have been killed but luckily my horses are used to my dogs but that is a skill you understand, years of practice to make a calm horse and he's like silence and I'm like luckily we probably won't see another rider but I'm just saying

be AWARE

So the ride is fine but the whole ride I am thinking of how I would like to break up with Mordy I am thinking of ways to offend him so he wouldn't come back I would say I am going to give all your money to Palestine or if he offered me more money to ride I would say it's not the money, Mordy, I just don't like YOU

We get back to my house and unload off the horses and the one lone white chicken who is loose gets a terrified look in her eye because his dog just starts chasing it. So I have saddles half off and not finished untacking but I have to save the chicken and he's sort of mildly calling his dog but not actually going after it, he's giving carrots to the horses

so I run after the dog and duck through the fence to the pool side and the dog has fallen INTO THE POOL, and is trying to swim while getting tangled up in the pool cover and I am looking at 2000 dollars worth of dog about to die and Mordy is nowhere, Mordy is climbing the fence so he can sit high up and feed carrots to the horses and I reach in and grab the flailing fucking dog and drag her Kardashian ass to the pool step while she tries to swim with four legs in every other direction and the chicken has landed in the pool also but she seems to be happy that no one can get her floating there until her feathers get so wet and heavy she'll drown so I haul the fucking dog out of the fucking pool and then go to rescue my innocent chicken who looks at me gratefully like I'm a vat of hot fudge at Baskin Robbins and I tuck her under my arm away from all dogs and go and put her behind bars with the rest of the flock to dry out in lock up, and I look around and Mordy has all four horses reaching for carrots where he's perched on the fence like Julie Andrews waving a baton at the Von Trapp children and I just think lordy mordy

I say cheerily well she fell in the pool chasing a chicken and he's like hey the horse tried to kick my dog! pointing with a carrot at the offending horse and I stare at him literally for one full minute and I say you're in a BARNYARD. Your dog is in a barnyard.

I tell him maybe he wants a towel for his dog (because I've seen his car and it is not beach ready like my car for sure) and he says yes he would like to take me up on that and so I get one of the old flood towels that we keep in the flood towel area in the garage (for floods) and I say here you know what keep it take it to go

in fact to go now

and he towels off his dog right there shines her up like Queen Elizabeth and then leaves the towel just anywhere right there seems good to him, not folded, not gratefully, and I'm just shoveling them toward the gate and he said he had a great time and off goes Mordy.

I learned alot, fellow adventurers. I learned childhood dogs are best left in glowing childhood memories. That dog was never my lovely mellow childhood dog. That's a what money buys dog. And car. And boots. I'm not saying I didn't like the money. 

But where is the horse in all this? The horse brings the big eyed peace. The horse is the reason. That's what was missing, and they were right there under us all along.

This is why I am hoping Mordy never texts again.

Two Week Wrap Up

Two weeks in. Post graduate motherhood.

Things have calmed down. That was quite the turmoil, unexpected feeling tornado but it deposited me back down and I'm here, better.

When you fill your life with cleaning up the aftermath of 25 years of kids it's actually really satisfying. I may have been doing too much. I can't stop cleaning now. Cleaning is the the new Bess. Kidding.

It's not like I'm ALL the way done with motherhood. Emma called crying from Boulder the other day. That was good. I liked hearing her, not the crying, but the love that she needed. I had plenty for her. I'm not sure I did her any good but the crying sounds stopped after awhile and there was some laughing and then there she was, my little baby just a bit bigger and in a state not the one I'm in, a few over. But I'm always in the same state Emma's in because she's still mine.

And Bess is doing just fine up the coast. Starting a band. Joining the excursion club. Trying pickle ball. Trying acting. Doing laundry. Wondering what dryer sheets are actually for and if she needs them. And Nathan is just working and changing the tires on and off his and Gio Sk8s cars at night.

I just ride, swim, take care of mom, blow the yard, clean the garage, feel bewildered to be here, clean the housepoolhottub, eat tuna, eat old pizza, have diarrhea, feel guilty that I don't take the dogs on the trail, feed all the animals, feel glad I don't have to worry that Bess doesn't eat anything, read horse training books and sometimes watch sad or funny shows with B at night. 

But then I'll read some Emily Dickinson or ee cummings or a french novelist and I will feel like I belong to the world again. I guess I have to write a new thing, or start a new stocking. I haven't had any inspiration hit me, I think I've been in Huge Change and Recovery Mode. 

I'll stay open. Something funny will come.

The most interesting thing is training Meriwether because each ride I learn something. Like how to explain to him with my leg that he shouldn't back into the bushes because they feel good to itch his butt on. That it isn't polite when you are hosting a rider on your back to try and sit in the bushes. I am pretty big for him but he is sturdy and he never complains. He likes the work. I definitely will break him to cart, he's done some of the beforework to get him ready but I'm not stupid to try and do something I don't know how to do very well on my own. I'm hoping the cart fairy will see me wishing for her and appear.

Also I miss Kurt. He was so fun and now he's just feeling struggly with his throat troubles. It's hard to have an on call friend for 5 years who now can't fulfill his duties as jokemaster. And it's so difficult for him. Changes are happening everywhere, with all of us, I guess this is what life is about but the abundance of it is a bit dramatic.

Also I can't believe Bess is in film school just like I was back when John Hughes was the shit. How lucky to be here, in my packed full garage, at this end of kids and to have grown up alongside all these kids. We're so full. Not just the garage. We're busting with it.

One Week Later

I was pretty mad that first 24 hours. I couldn't believe how mad I was. Rejection and uselessness make for some bad inside-my-mind motherhood yelp reviews. I was also mad to realize that the college end isn't at all what you're running for. You're running because the motherrunning is so fucking awesome. Sure you're always late and dirty and swearing and overburdened. I had no idea that THAT busy-ness, is what life is, and there is nothing apart from that. That is its meaning.

How ANYONE can enjoy the 100 mph of motherhood as it keeps ramping up in the teenage years until you barf them out into college and then come back to the silent garage crammed full of all the memories - and then not be crazy? I don't think this person exists, this all-figured-out mother. I think there is only me, the mess, and the pools of love everywhere from the raindeluge of children.

So I'm now one week in, and I have to tell you, going through the garage (while not what I want to do ever) is actually really really fun. I give myself a limit so as not to be crying from the hugeness of all the stuff, I say to myself, Myself you only have to do two bags. One trash and one donate. Each day.

Without Bess to worry about, I actually have time to do things in a thoughtful way. I can stand in the garage and sift through things and there is so much laughter at the stuff they said and the tooth fairy letters and their handwriting and the sports pictures when they had no teeth and I know exactly now what I can throw away and it isn't agonized over now because it's obvious what is necessary and what can go.

Sifting through makes me see every minute how busy I was, how I didn't know what to do with this stuff but I knew I would get to it later, and best of all, seeing the remnants of 25 years on the go hands full with babies made me see how rich

i am rich

our family is rich beyond Zeus and Hera and Europa and other distant god planets

B and I and my parents and my bigger fam, we got to be part of someone's life fabric we got to be threaded in there. Those three kids are rich because of us, man. And WE are beyond because when you put your whole heart into something you blow up like the guy who strapped lawn chairs to a bunch of balloons and launched himself into the sky in Orange County somewhere in the 80s. Remember that guy? He was stupid and he was flying up by airplanes.

We launched ourselves and we don't have to come back from that. We can stay floating and enjoy the incredible and unique scenery we created.

Those babies make the world make sense. 

I'm not mad at all anymore. I can even talk to that guy Barry. I am curious to see what this new path is. Once I make a path in the garage. Then I can make another one outside of there.

Also I kind of like the one I'm already on. All the paths are good and the best ones end in ice cream.

Also the very most important thing of this week of recovering from Hands On Motherhood? B bought bagels the day before she left and we didn't get to eat them. 

I froze them so they wouldn't go bad and every day of these last 7 days I have been unfreezing and eating a fresh bagel. If you ever get to the end of motherhood, make sure someone who loves you buys you bagels for that week. Fresh bagels, fresh eggs. It cheered me up every single day.

Circle Back

 

 

I wake up the morning after we dropped you at college after sleeping in your bed. I got home, shoved all your clothes into the closet, opened the window and jammed the fan in to make it fresh, got in your lumpy bed like the momma bear in the 3 bears, got mad that you were sleeping like this, too tired to fix it, dogs happy to be in your room and then had a fitful night. But I wanted to be in my house, in the house where I had all the kids crawling around me, not out in dementia land a little known subdivision that no one visits because no one answers the door when you knock. And Barry took over the big bedroom which he would call our bedroom but in my mind it was a bed full of kids and then I got out of there. 

This morning I woke up and got up to clean up mom and give her a pill and juice and then go out to muck the horses and chickens who were waiting to be fed and it wasn't til I got the rake in my hand to muck the shit that I looked up and saw the wave coming. 

It was rage. I mucked and cried and I wasn't crying because I missed my daughter. I was crying because I missed OUT on my daughter, the one I wanted that doesn't exist. I realized with horror that this is how b feels about his brother donny and how he must feel about his relationship with me. Living with Bess since she was 12 when she lost a basketball game and I went to hug her and she turned away, rejecting me for the very first time ever and leaving me holding all the bags of love - I have lived in that for the last 6 years. 

I had rage for all the love I had that was unused and all the arms I had hanging wasted not requested, the basics of human existence, connection, humor, love, affection, wiped clean like a target whiteboard. Which we just bought for her dorm room door.

She would not allow love, she was the hoover dam of affection. 

As I mucked I felt what was under all that anger and then flowed the tears because all of it was hurt. An arrow pronged heart just shredded from living in a relationship shredded years ago and did I create Bess being removed from love because she saw how I blocked love in my own life?

I think all this painful mucking, this is how things get opened up and maybe change is possible. My body wants to let go of all this pain but there may not be a water tower big enough to hold all the tears of rage humiliation sadness horror neglect to self, beauty  because there is always beauty no matter how difficult

huh

in the middle of writing this Bess just called me

Huh

head tilt

maybe there needed to be some separation to find the love. Maybe we take our connection that isn't lost to the wind and carry it forward into a new place

All I know is I bought four pairs of stirrups on the drive home from leaving her dorm at 10 pm in simi vallley so some obsessions never end

You told me not to change your bed so I won't, you said you met someone named Clayton who's from a small town and rides horses and is her zach and a billie eilish lover

she and her roommates walked down the hall and there was a door that said knock if you want to say hi and they did and there were a bunch of people in there

She is doing well

She is still your daughter

Maybe she had to go away to come back

You Wood

I feel like I failed my daughter.

I'm sitting in her room, the room I was never allowed in because her cold shoulder took up most of it. As soon as we got home from dropping her off at college I took care of the horses and my mom and dogs and then I went in her room. 

Piles of clothes. Gift bags shoeboxes. She only took up a very small part of this room. Just the edge of her bed where she and her phone had a very peaceful life. 

I stuffed all the clothes in the closet. I put a red sheet over the dirty rug. I plugged in a clock and a lamp. This is my room now. My office now. I get to be where you aren't.

I hate seeing that she showed us so very little of her life or herself. She found us confounding and annoying. She found us embarrassing and in the way. 

We dropped her in a room with two other girls. She will have no privacy. She has a communal bathroom. Someone else will make her meals. She will be off her phone. She will be looking around. She will be laughing. 

She didn't want to go to college. She is at college because I made her fill out the applications. We made her take the hard classes. We toured the schools. She was busy as a teenager should be, listening to music. Daydreaming. Buying stuff at thrift stores.

She is in a place where she can't be lonely now. That is where we didn't fail her. I read her a poem from a kid book, an ee poem, I carry your heart. I carry it in my heart. 

I started crying in her dorm room, with Nathan and Brie and Barry and Bess because even though she never loved us the way I wished so hard she would, she turned the other cheek since she was 12, but reading that poem, and reading goodnight moon to her in her bed I started crying.  Because she is so much like me really. She is alone. 

She isn't going to find peace at college. She will find alot of things so challenging like fixing her bike. Eating food. Not having dogs. She will not miss me because she does not know how much she means to me because she never used me. She never loved me the way I needed. I needed love as much as she did, and both of us did things the same way, running away from things that matter.

Maybe that's why it hurts so much, after 25 years and three babies all grown and flown. To not feel like you did everything right. Even when you did everything you could and when the last one didn't want you around you started training horses. Horses like you. Horses will never be the baby that you nurtured and adored and waitered for. 

There is nothing else that matters. 

On the way to the school we were driving over a high up bridge and Nathan said this is a big suicide bridge. 

I can see that relief. To be done and then to say okay I'm picking when I'm done, and this job was too hard. Tonight at midnight on the day of my last child leaving, I would say yes it is too hard. You can't love them into loving you. They're gonna do what they want to do.

I feel like I shouldn't have listened to Emma when she told me Lilly was mean, and I started treating her with more criticism. 

I just don't want a cold family. I couldn't bear going to that concert with her one of her last days because I didn't want to be standing for 10 hours with a person who would not talk to me or let me touch her. 

It's like a bad break up. 

I think it is late and my marriage I see the holes, but my family is here around me. I have a son and his girlfriend and our house that houses us all. I have lots of love. I have a full garage that I can tackle bit by bit but there is no glory in getting rid of everything that mattered to you. I have a husband who was falling asleep in the car on the way home because he is old and he will leave too eventually. 

I can't bear it I don't think. The moving of life.

I will try to go to the beach and practice surfing. I will ride to clear my mind. I will have a quiet sunday like every other day while it's still warm, riding and swimming and cleaning. 

I will miss the tending. Because even though she didn't show it I know she felt our love. I know my actions made a good person and we grew her alive to this place, in that school by the sea. She'll be okay. She will thrive. I feel my life is over. 

It was too hard anyway. I feel like how b feels when bruce yells at him. All that matters is the kids. That's all we have. 

My life job is done. The biggest chunk of it is done. This is how it feels to succeed. It feels like looking in a mirror at a bar in bad lighting and saying wait this is it? This is how it feels to actually do something RIGHT? it's like being on a splintered raft in the ocean. 

That's what they should tell you. When you have your baby. That at the end they leave and you are a splintered raft. Would you do it

You would

I wake up the morning after we dropped you at college after sleeping in your bed. I got home, shoved all your clothes into the closet, opened the window and jammed the fan in to make it fresh, got in your lumpy bed like the momma bear in the 3 bears, got mad that you were sleeping like this, to tired to fix it, dogs happy to be in your room and then had a fitful night. But I wanted to be in my house, in the house where I had all the kids crawling around me, not out in dementia land a little known subdivision that no one visits because no one answers the door when you knock. And Barry took over the big bedroom which he would call our bedroom but there never was an our bedroom in my mind, there was a bed full of kids and then I got out of there. So I can't face the hole that is that relationship, especially after the drive home where he was falling asleep in the car because he's 84 and he had a young man's trip to Germany where he was up all night and at home all he can do is watch politics and sit in a chair and sleep nude which he's now decided he wants to do cause he read it was good for you.

This morning I woke up and got up to clean up mom and give her a pill and juice and then go out to much the horses and chickens who were waiting to be fed and it wasn't til I got the rake in my hand to muck the shit that I looked up and saw the wave coming. 

It was rage. i mucked and cried and I wasn't crying because I missed my daughter. I was crying because I missed OUT on my daughter, the one I wanted that doesn't exist. I realized with horror that this is how b feels about his brother donny and how he must feel about his relationship with me. Living with Bess since she was 12 when she lost a basketball game and I went to hug her and she turned away, rejecting me for the very first time ever and leaving me holding all the bags of love - I have lived in that for the last 6 years. 

I had rage for all the love I had that was unused and all the arms I had hanging wasted not requested, the basics of human existence, connection, humor, love, affection, wiped clean like a target whiteboard. Which we just bought for her dorm room door.

She would not allow love, she was the hoover dam of affection. 

As I mucked I felt what was under all that anger and then flowed the tears because all of it was hurt. An arrow pronged heart just shredded from living in a relationship that should have broken up years ago and now the guy might be too old to want to fix anything oh wait that's the OTHER relationship, and I take full responsibility for being the hoover dam. But then did I create Bess being removed from love because she saw how I blocked love in my own life?

I think all this painful mucking, this is how things get opened up and maybe change is possible. My body wants to let go of all this pain but there may not be a water tower big enough to hold all the tears of rage humiliation sadness horror neglect to self, beauty  because there is always beauty no matter how difficult

huh

in the middle of writing this Bess just called me

Huh

head tilt

maybe there needed to be some separation to find the love. Maybe we take our connection that isn't lost to the wind and carry it forward into a new place

All I know is I bought four pairs of stirrups on the drive home at 10 pm in simi vallley so some obsessions never end

You told me not to change your bed so I won't, you said you met someone named Clayton who's from a small town and rides horses and is her zach and a billie eilish lover

she and her roommates walked down the hall and there was a door that said knock if you want to say hi and they did and there were a bunch of people in there

mom awards

I have to stop watching tv because I start thinking that everything happening there is happening to me. Like I don't have cancer. So far. I'm not Emily Dickinson. I didn't kill my roommate in Italy while I was doing my study abroad. 

I'm very susceptible these days. I'm a vulnerable husk. If anyone even looks at me wrong I'm like it's me isn't it. I failed you.

Maybe because Bess is about to go off to college and where is the stage I walk across to get my certificate of achievement. I know the paper it's printed on is recycled and the teachers handing it out are very old and faking being enthusiastic. They've done a million awards shows, shaking the hands of the victors.

I think the problem is we all want the award but when you do the actual work to get the award, once you're there shaking the hand you're looking around like this is what I was dreaming about? That's not even a real red carpet

There's no award that can whipped cream and cherry the top of a hard earned life. And the whipped cream is the most fun part. But wait a second folks are you kidding me that the best part about the hard earned life is the HARD PART    ?

waiiiiiit I was always trying to get THROUGH the hard part to scratch my way toward the ice cream at the end. The ICE CREAM tastes the best. The wanting the ice cream and the stopping to eat it is maybe the best. With your friends.

It's been a weird week because B is in Germany with his brother, two jews getting AWARDS in Germany some things have changed since 1942 am I right ladies

So he's not here to make sense of this bewilderment I'm having by sleeping in the big house where he usually sleeps after I changed all the sheets to make them more ladylike fresh and I'm alone in the tumbling week counting down to when we're dumping our last kid project at her school by the beach and we come back empty handed like the way we started but worse because now we know better

Our house is destroyed by love of 25 years of kids, strewn wreckage of old toys and jungle gyms in the living room, floury christmas cookie dough cutting, and all the times we had to wrangle together through our one door to the car to go somewhere

what now frederick

Maybe the german award will come with what now instructions. Maybe I build a dais and walk across myself putting the tassel from one side to the other except I don't really want to graduate I was mid bask

even really great meals at Phillipe's end eventually. I guess. 

I feel like you wake up from your motherhood dream and which then becomes fullblown career and then like any other production you fall over at the end and get sick for a week because you were holding on to get through the 18 hour day shoots, and in this case 24 hour day on calls. What do you then do with your really good skills of criticizing people for not doing things your way and knowing that she better take a sweater and where's your water bottle and do you have money

I liked dispatching humans. I didn't like cooking except for pancakes. I felt bereft on a raft some of the time. Especially with teenagers. Where did the loving creatures go. But then I see that they were stretching their arms in their bubble, trying to make it bigger. I had to wait for them to remember I was here too still. Waiting. Remind myself I'm not just waiting there I'm growing people, and growing me. Growing takes a long time and it's mostly silent. Look at grass.

I was busy showing up every day. That's what I was doing.

The Mom Awards Show would just be every mom standing there holding all the bags and waters and papers and snacks, saying I'll be right here

meri no go

I  must be addicted to adrenaline or something cause now I'm obsessed with learning surfing and of course riding a young horse probably almost as terrifying as disarming land mines but furrier and nuzzlier

Meri isn't a dangerous guy he's pretty predictable. If he doesn't wanna go he just stops and you could be godzilla up there with a blow torch and he just looks at you mildly like I'm not done standing here though

The other day he had an itchy butt and like all things that happen with horses it was 2 am and he decided to rub a hole in his ass because the tree felt so good. So I lotioned up the hole and the next night he went to rub it on a wall and knocked the whole wall down he was like we didn't need that. Look I did you a favor it was loose anyway and now we can see through 

win win

today I felt a little victorious though because when he stopped I said no way man 

as long as he wasn't going to back up and sit down I was going to keep escalating my gozillaness from in the saddle until he moved forward

it was about ten million degrees and sweating makes me even madder but I kept controlling myself  stopping waving my rope and hitting him every now and then and every time he even shifted an eyelash I stopped and praised him make the right thing easy and the wrong thing hard as the horse trainer motto goes

And it did take about 10 minutes long opera intermission type minutes long dmv waiting in hard chairs minutes and then 

he walked forward like okkayyyyy quit yer yapping and he walked like I had been doing no shenanigans and wild gestures

of course he stopped again a few times but was easier to get into first again and I felt like it was dawning on him ohhhhh wait I think she's in charge of where I go and how fast ohhhhh weird hmmmm

So he hasn't quite accepted me as his leader but he's put it on the table after today

now

just 57000 more rides and I'll be able to sing, text my friends, look at birds and remember back vaguely to when he wouldn't go fucking anywhere

this is the beauty of life

we were there, fellas

My days of being a 24 hour waiter are drawing to a close. It's been 25 years of 24 hours on call emotional physical spiritual well being coach with the kind of attention you can't pay for on the most expensive airline first class, not even on the double decker ones they had in the 70s when the stewardesses dressed like they should in short skirts and tall boots with real silverware. We remember how it felt when things really mattered when airlinepeople used all the money for the glamour of the customer not these shitty vegan pretzels that taste like the dust of Egyptian coffins and the stewardesses are all guys like the spokesmodels now on Let's Make a Deal. Sometimes it's not better to give everyone a chance. Better for them maybe, cool for equality, but aren't women still getting paid less

I realized it yesterday when we went to the beach with one of Bess's two new roommates and the girl made a noise with her nose a few times and I thought you're going to be hearing that for the next year in close quarters that noise is going to be all you remember when you're my age looking back

I realized seeing these girls in the ocean that Bess is taking the leap, this beautiful daring quiet shark with a bent sense of humor and delicate hands, face in all the angles I love, this difficult tumultuous teen is the flag at the end of my motherhood race and I started on this gleaming sliver chrome bike and I'm skidding through at the end on a beaten up broken Big Wheel that hurts my ass and doesn't really even roll anymore

This means we were there, fellas. We used it til it broke

Also when you see a carbon copy of your kid or what's supposed to look like your kid in age and rank and will be in the same room with your kid and they have no vibrant Bessness, this new girl is the AI version, it all functions and it's not annoying except for that nose thing but when you lift up the sheet and look under there's just a bunch of wires

where if you even just look at my daughter sitting there minutes ago in her car seat on the way to the zoo with ponytails and a glorious shrieking laugh you might have to wear sunglasses because she shines like the top of the chrysler building

it's the hard knock life

for moms

All the other moms we started preschool with, let's see, one got new boobs and a divorce, one died, one moved to where it rains, one moved to where it never rains, one had open heart surgery when really all she needed was her kids to be nicer to her

Then there's me still mothering

mothering til the last second

Sure I'm not that good at it anymore I don't cook barely the dogs have ear infections I shifted over to dementia care (as seems to be the river of care movement at this age) and I filled my backyard with horses. I see that maybe I should be done with all care so my body can rest. My gramma at this age was flying in a tiny airplane with my grandpa and they traveled the country in an airstream and in Ireland she wore bulky wool lady suits and her hair in a bun according to the curling snapshots

that was back when they had stewardesses waving you friendlyish toward the next phase. My gramma never looked back she said goodbye to her children to marriage, gave them something borrowed, something blue and then boarded her airstream and got really good at playing bridge

the kids were on their own and she only had her surly husband to bend over and cook 3 meals a day for til he lost his marbles and eventually died. Then she cut her hair off, lived 6 glorious months as a free person, moved back to her childhood town and promptly signaled her finale with a fine stroke and died 3 days later easily, amongst music with my mom singing and with me and my two little kids sliding down her carpeted stairs on sleeping bags. She came from a big family and she died in a family she made

she let all her cards fall away

So is Bess leaving an ending or just a drive up the coast where she can live next to the lulling ocean and be free to live like a luxurious queen gathering herself and her memories for her future lifetime

Is it worth it to be the mom, eaten off of, carrying all the cups from the car, screaming where are your shoes 5 minutes before you have to be somewhere 20 minutes away

would I trade even a second of this deeply messy gritty meat grinded body life

I have fallen down on the hot tarmac during the last lap and I reach forward with all my might to push the tag team last member toward the last leg just a nudge she's almost there

she doesn't come back to pick me up she only holds up her water like did you fill this up then she lilts forward lumbering like a baby polar bear and sheds her skin to reveal a lengthy supermodel and we won the race

this is how it looks moms 

says emily

I've been reading Emily Dickinson who I never read before because she seemed cryptic but there's a show about her that made her modern and then if you go back and look at the actual person. Wow. She's deeply funny.

She makes the small things important.

I was thinking about the tiny glass animals I had as a kid, this is something Emily would like she told me to tell you guys. They weren't glass they were painted ceramic I think but very tiny figures like the tip of your pinkies and sold on their little individual islands squares, glued on to one inch beige cardstock with fancy ink pen prices on the very corners. I must have been under ten, and there were homey stores on Montana Blvd in Santa Monica which is now like Beverly Hills but in the early 70's it was a gentle beach town, and my mom was getting Chinese Food at Ah Fong's and next door was this little store how did they stay in business but there was a wooden rack of these animals and I carefully breathed in all of these treasures.

Here's why I loved them. You could make them into families. There was a mom cat and there were a few tiny kittens on separate papers. There were frogs I never liked and horses and yellow ducklings and each one was delicate and looked real just miniature. You could feel the scruffy chin of the tiny white dog, with his ant-sized tongue hanging out. 

My mom would let me get one every now and then, and I had a small collection and here's where I spent all my time. I would take the animals scooped up and go under the dining room table where there was a central leg with big fat branches holding up the table but it was a thick tree of carved wood, and flat U shapes so there were places I could put the animals in the tree. I would lie there and make up my world, moving the animals where they needed to visit and having them talk and this wasn't just to kill time this was because this was the world.

You know how much power you have when you are eight. As Emily said, the Kingdom, the Power and the Glory, the power is in the middle because it is the only one that matters.

At eight the carpet is your lake, you float on your back resting, the sky is your painting and the table is full of life.

The later world confuses you draws you forward tugging you to leave that quiet wonderland because look your legs got longer you should use those and there really are so many other things maybe things are better where all the other kids are going so you leave your animals

then the cyclone whirls you away, decades go by, jobs that are yours, tricycles that aren't yours, life  grabs you up by the throat and confuses you saying look at this shiny thing but it isn't very interesting like the red sticker for your car renewal which I guess is kind of fun you can peel it and you paid for it so you feel like it is a sort of winning but in your heart you know these seem faded and tattered prizes and Emily says yes CAN YOU SEE IT and I can see I am following her where she is looking at a light shining down the worn path down the ancient childhood oriental rug that is still here to the spot under the table where there is no time and there's nobody down there but what your spirit tells you is there and those animals are your friends and they always want to be where you are and and they still want to play.

sure maybe my mom fucked up later like Emily's dad fucked up by being too strict, but when I was 8 she held my hand in that little store and I wanted them all and sometimes she would say let's get this one  

and pretty soon Emily never left the house at all except to wander in nature and let her hand brush the tops of all flowers glowing silently in sunset

little things are the path to great imagination

I'm not anywhere all that imaginating hasn't brought me hundreds of dollars or fame in fact you won't see it anywhere but you can see it

in my kids   on my stockings  in my heart  in my smile   in my yearning   in my fingers  

I'm still under the table

(grateful, to my parents)

Why can't this matter

she keeps saying

says Emily

Chocolate

I had a tiny baby today.

I was a tiny baby, I was 33. I had been wanting a Nathan since I was 22. Started trying for a Nathan around 27. 

Then in Florida, surrounded by green fields and alligators, there he was. He had a big bump on his head. I was no longer a person. I was a superinflated superhero. I was just a mom.

My body got to do what it was supposed to do, feed and nurture the wee one. So I spent my days and nights with tiny diapers and tiny flailing legs and a tiny face the size of silver dollar pancake. 

I was the richest person I ever met.

I got even richer of course. Because Emma demanded to be born as soon as possible, she was scratching the walls in there. And then little Bess was dozing, she was pretty content to be just where she was I had to coax her out with hot cheeto puffs but she slid out later, into last place. In fact she told me yesterday, this is the last baby talking about college when we were coming back from a killer day surfing at the beach, she said "oh yeah I signed up at the latest time possible to move in to the dorms. 4pm." 

I actually love just watching how they pick things, how they run their lives, what they value, what their speed is, what they notice, how slow they are (or sometimes quick) to deem someone worthy.

This is what I've gotten out of 25 years of being someone's mom. Can I scream it with fierceness and what's the word for supreme happiness? Is it chocolate? Then I scream CHOCOLATE!! To anyone who can hear me. 

For all the birthday parties and stressful cleaning beforehand, for all the little shoes, for a garage full of memories, for dogs sleeping in beds, for bunk beds, for golf carts, for car seats, for onesies, for swimming at two weeks, two years, four years old, for noticing holes in the ground and yelling into them, for knocking over blocks in kindergarten and getting a terse note home from the teacher (Nathan was right tho, Shelby was a pain in the ass, knock her blocks over!), for talent shows and following them to the piano teacher's house, for following them to bathrooms, piling on the beds, being on the toboggan in Switzerland, all the lemon drinks on Italian amtrack

All the time I have spent in the company of such wizardry has stitched me a fat life of belonging to some unprecedented people

It all started on this day, Nattan, with your tiny face and they put you on my chest and you were covered in goo and all squished up and dad was crying and you were easily the greatest gift of my life.  I hope when you have kids you will see how they blow a hole through your heart and fill it with candy and unicorns and serious serious mattering. A smattering of mattering, overspread on thick.

There's no way to write it. My heart is a balloon. Like the blimp kind. Like bigger than anything, bigger than Steve Jobs. Or even bigger than the original BMW plant in Germany which is probably where you want to live or at least go to worship. Or maybe the Laker practice arena wherever that is. That seems like pretty holy ground to an Opper.

You seriously could have been an ax murderer and I would have been like but look. Look at his hair. 

Thanks for yelling MERDE down to french people on the river Seine from that bridge. Thanks for locking people in that room in the Tower of London and then videoing them being confused. Thanks for always getting Waba when we can't figure out what to eat. Thanks for always saying it's okay mom.

Thanks for being our baby, huge and hairy or small and new. No one can take that from us. You started a trend that has a made a life full of tiny cars and bikes all roped together into a train that you pulled, usually naked, outside. 

You made our life a fabric, and you don't even mind.