I've spent the last few days making lift a flap posters for my parents' birthdays. I have three parents sharing two birthdays right next to each other. There's alot of celebrating of humans there, some importanttome humans.
So I play with ideas of what they mean to me and I cut paper and write things while I make the cookies they like and this is a good way to make a life.
I made the really nice ones for my two parents that are functional in the brain, and then I decided hey I wanna make a list of 81 things that make my mom a good mom. So I went outside to write it all down but not on the fancy poster just in a notebook and it ended up being a letter to my mom that I cried the entire time while writing. Because my mom was my whole sled team. Even during bad times, some of which she definitely created. Being raised by humans is no high priced waterslide into a sea of champagne. But who wants that kind of thing anyway, so sticky and the headache after.
I cried because being alive is so lucky. Being born to the weirdo parents I got, at least they feel things. They're creative. They're funny. They're vivacious. All three of them. Vivacity. Top of the scales. I am forever their young audience, looking up at them.
I took the letter and climbed in bed with my mom. I read her the letter and the eventual list I made of 81 things that make my mom a good mom to my mom. It wasn't her birthday yet, hers was today, and this was still last night. But I had to start early cause I had to sub in 4th grade in the morning today for a few hours and I knew I'd be tired. Had to split up the days. Reading that letter was the best thing I could've done. It made me laugh, it made me cry through the whole thing. Talking to my mom and having her there listening (while watching Flipper with the sound off), getting to share what she brought to my life and all the wonder and mistakes and water views. It was gratifying on a Jules level. It was the guts of me.
The next morning I already felt satisfied so the day was easier. Barry helped by bringing a pizza and some balloons when he picked up Bess. I hefted in Stephen Crane (the lift) that huge heavy metal lift that lifts her up in a sling so I could swing her over into the big cozy chair for her birthday, not the everyday wheelchair. She had a throne, we sang to her, she ate ice cream, apples, pizza. We watched Monty Python eventually, the soundtrack album we would play while lying on the living room floor in the 80's in Maryland, listening over and over and knowing all the humor by heart. At night I put her back in her room, Nathan had to heft her into the chair with his man arms since Stephen Crane had not charged at all weirdly and had quit.
In bed I played Mr Blue Sky, our all time favorite song she would blare in the car with the windows down. I played Kindness by David Wilcox which makes me cry and cry. She played it for me many times when she lived here and the kids were little. It is her. I put on the Commitments. Because of course. I Can't Stand the Rain.
Then I cried with my head in her lap, by her bedside. I guess that's what bedsides are made for, finally I am using it correctly. When someone is ill. I feel happy to try and do all the things to feel this life in my hands, and not be afraid of the largeness of my heart or my connection to the people I love. Why would we not love like this. This is why work was invented, because if we all felt this way all the time with no other distractions, we would be exhausted. It is essence. Aside from discovering the universe and its further secrets, love seems to be the only other worthy heartwaster.
When I had her all blanketed and relaxed and cried on in her bed, I told her right to her eyes that I loved her, and Happy Birthday.
Is this it? she said
I fed the horses and sat outside listening to the people in the house talking about basketball, drifting out the window. I sat in a chair by the pool that is flimsy but didn't fold up and kill me. Looked up at the sky with its cloudy beauty.
This is it
