We walk up a mountain, these children and I.

The first child tramples among wet leaves, ice, and rock. The second sleeps inside of me within the soft bowl of my round belly. We hike, holding onto trees and one another for balance. She bounces in her rubber boots toward trail markers, while I purposefully press my boots onto the ground, step by step, up and up. I am two weeks from my due date.  We rest on stones and damp mossy tree trunks.  We talk and stop and look around a lot.

"Let's be trailblazers!" We say as we head into the wildwood to avoid the slickest and steepest of spots.

After an hour, she starts to sag and say that she's tired. "You are strong. Say, 'I am strong!'"

"I am strong." She says, her posture perking up.

"If you say you're tired, you will feel tired. But if you say you're strong, you will feel strong."

My calves are warm. My breath is quick. My cheeks are pink. The sun pours past the bare trees to shine on this quiet land and to shine on her and me. I am so grateful for these bodies.

"You are strong," I tell her. "You are big and strong."

Eventually, between an icy stream and a parking lot, we sit on a blanket, picnicking on blueberries, fig bars, and peanut butter/jelly sandwiches. While we eat silently, the winter sun seeps into me.

I am strong. Say, I am strong. 

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It is noise for the eyes and a circus for the mind.  It is a cacophony of psychotic atrocities, of lonely celebrities, and of the climate's warnings: earthquakes, wildfires, tsunamis, and all other earthly tragedies. Beneath the finger lies the globe's gossip and the country's failings. It is a place for a political ego to find evidence and articulate orators, writers and leaders. It triggers us or leaves us hopeless, ready for rally and revolution. The cell phone is somewhere else entirely, in both the ether and the palm, glowing like some small fluorescent sun. Screens leave me heavy with uncertainty. Therefore, I leave them away from me, silent, for pieces of every day.

Silence.

Screen-less silence.

I listen to the hum of the stove and the hush of my breath.

I let my mind wander and rest in homeostasis.

Yes.

Yet, in this distraction from internal dialogue, space, and boredom, I sometimes stumble upon transformation. It doesn't happen often. Only occasionally do I see a stranger and our similarities and disparities and realize more completely, inequality. Through screens, the brain and being can be educated and enlightened by all sorts of strangers from the human community. Screens can heal, and tie people and cultures together. Just as they can rip us apart with ignorant isms.

So, yes, silence.

I believe in screen-less silence.

I need this emptiness, this time of abandoning and internal seeing.

As we approach another year of political uncertainty, of egos shouting into small screens for all to see, I hope I am wiser than I was in 2016. Just as I hope these screens shine the full spectrum, and not simply the starkness of sides. 

I will seek more screen-less silence and only after, allow myself the power to...

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This Magnificent Creature

When my body decides it is time to birth this baby, I will meet the moment with every other woman who has birthed a baby before me. Imagine my hospital room crowded with inspirational energy. I have everything I need. I have everything I need. Everything. The wisdom inherited by my bones, muscles, and blood is wiser than any machine, midwife, or doctor, and if I listen to this magnificent creature, this ancient animal body of mine, I will be listening to nature and I will be fine. 

After I had my first child, I was wary and worried for others to meet the births of their babies. For on the cusp of life, there is the possibility of fatality, of sudden surgery, and of disease and deadly deformity. 

As I near this baby's entrance from warm wet womb to bright breathy earth, I do not have a lot of fear, but I have some, for I am human, and when it rises, or rather, pummels me, I simply try to be present. At this moment, we are still perfect. I am round and well, while he is swimming inside me like a fat fish in a small bag of water. 

When my body decides it is time to birth this baby, I hope to not hide from birth, as I did with my first. For I know now what to expect. Pain must move through me. It is senseless to resist it. I am not even speaking of drugs, but of nonresistance. One must allow labor to take the lead. My body opened and shook the first time. I felt like land quaking, my plates shifting. I squeezed my eyelids shut, too frightened to look, while I panted and pushed and felt the rush and relief of birth. I know it will hurt. Just as I know my body will quake and open until this baby's head, shoulders, knees, and toes are out! 

What is time?

Is it counting? Is it really a written tally of minutes and mornings? Or is it wider than linear?

Is it the number of glasses and flannel and denim you have worn? ...or the number of buttons, belts, and boots that have kept you warm? Perhaps it is as simple as the freckles splattered across your forehead and the number of brown and white hairs sewn through the skin of your chin. Your face, shaped by line and circle, perhaps it is my clock. Perhaps, you are my clock. And this strong body, the part of you I feel with my strong body, is proof of the tide, and of the earth's turning, and of time. 

Your body is different now. Those 18-year-old atoms are all long gone. At the moment, new molecules make and move you. I hope that as these strong bodies shed and bloom, the formless souls in and around them will continue to grow too. May we grow too like fog, like water in the wind. May we blow to the sea and sky and into every community we reside.  May we grow and grow just as we know the universe grows and grows. May we be universes! - side by side, blissfully, blessed, boundless, and beautiful. Your body is different now. And you too are different. However, since we met, there has always been this knowing, - this knowing that we would follow us. As we have followed us, we have fallen into a generous flow, a current so natural and gentle. Boulders, dams, and boats wouldn't (or perhaps couldn't) stop us. I was never meant to meet many lovers. This I have also always known. You are this life, and in this life, you are my clock. 

Between you and me, there is a wild and simple and intimate love. It is raw, honest, vulnerable, and quiet. This love has never been taken for granted ...like we sometimes take water from the tap for granted, or food from the grocery for granted, or the air we breathe for granted. This love has never been taken for granted. We are grateful. 

I am not consuming tall cups of coffee.

I am slow now, or rather, I am slower and slowing to the speed of myself.


Are you ok? I'm asked. You seem funny.

Yes. I'm ok.

I am like a pond at dawn, still and reflective, hoping that through presence, the world will open up to me. Mostly, I'm doing this out of curiosity. Who am I? I still don't know and I don't know that I'll ever know. But for now, I like seeing myself this way - raw and full of water.

I speak now when I want and I smile only when a moment moves my heart to move my mouth. Coffee once darted and danced through me. I would feel inspired and alert with a quick wit. And yet, occasionally, I would feel a bit like a bug stuck inside a lampshade - insistent and distracted, perhaps even confused. A strong delicious drug, it has the power to fill me with temporary hope... even the darkest days lighten with a drop of cream. But, I know now, I don't need every morning to feel fixable or flexible. Instead, I can just be in the day's passing seconds. Yes, I still sometimes resist unpleasant minutes. But overall, I'm wherever I am.

Eventually, I will speed up again, but for now, I am slow, or rather, slower and slowing to the speed of myself.

King

On this day of independence, I wish for our king an awakening.

I wish for clarity to seep into the oval throne room, and for love to crown him.

On this day of independence, I wish for our king an awakening, an abandoning of blustery darkness for bright brilliant light.

Guilt and Gratitude

I am a simple human hollowed by the sorrows of others. Yes. I live with the luxury of guilt. For I live in the luxury of fair middle-class American skin. I live with the luxury of trust in the police.  I live with the luxury of English as a first language. I live with the luxury of health insurance. I live with the luxury of independence.

Now at thirty-something, I settle into the gentle bliss of ordinariness.  Sometimes, the romantic in me wants to be wild, unfettered, and free. (For this is what society preaches to young middle-class American citizens on how to have happiness.) Yet here I am satisfied and energized by the complex and yet simple work of caregiving. Here I am, on July 1, grateful that I don't need to work every single day. For if I had to work every single day, I would not be good. Nor would I be healthy and happy. Here I am, on July 1, starting my summer vacation and living with the luxury of necessary rejuvenation. 
It turns out, guilt and gratitude are two sides of the same coin. And so here I am grateful. Grateful that I don't need to flee my home and country. Grateful that I don't need to drown in the sea simply for the hope of living.  Here I am grateful that I do not starve or freeze or sleep on any street. But in a bed, surrounded by painted walls and trees.

I am a simple human hollowed by the sorrows of others.

Yes. I live in luxury.