My First Anniversary in Three Stories

Once upon a time, I slipped away from my friends and ended up walking all night through the streets of Chicago. As dawn softened the sky, I sat down on a set of concrete steps and looked up. A solitary, tenacious star still hung between two buildings in spite of the city lights and the strength of the sun. That star in the sky and me on the concrete ground, both of us searching for the lonely courage to linger where we didn’t belong. I tried to share the feeling of that moment with somebody once. I wanted to turn it into a story of the deepest part of myself, but all I came to was a medieval map of the edge of my world. The great mystery of myself beyond what I can explain, an unexplored ocean written in ornate and ancient hand…here are dragons. Travel there and you will be lost.

Did you know that carbon and oxygen are attracted to one another? If you don’t, you aren’t alone. It turns out carbon and oxygen aren’t aware of it either. Oxygen might rub right up against carbon, and they still won’t remember they’ve bonded before. It takes something earth shattering, catastrophic or wild for them to change their solitary perception. A bolt of lightning from the sky crashes into a tree. The carbon in the tree starts to tremble. The oxygen in the air begins to shake. They move faster and faster until they collide and …snap…they remember how good it feels to connect. A flame born from the heat of attraction. Maybe that’s why stories are best told around a fire. Those burning embers of carbon and oxygen match that strange inner light of imagination. In life we knock around forgetful of one another. In stories a sudden spark of creativity reminds us how good it feels to be found again.

And speaking of found…a group of tourists once embarked off the California coast for a day of seal watching. They found the long, dark shadow of a great white shark lurking beneath the boat. A nervous chatter spread through the crowd. The captain reminded them that sharks eat seals, which means seal season is also shark season. Things calmed down until a mother orca and her baby where spotted alongside the boat. The orca are top predators, but would this mother be any match to the cold, calculated powers of a great white? Mother and child disappeared below the dark water. The shark’s fin circled ominously above. The mother orca burst through the surface and crashed against the side of the shark. In the blink of an eye, she had the great white turned on his back in her mouth. When a shark is turned upside down, he falls immediately into a catatonic state. Unable to fight, the great white was easy prey. The orca killed him in an instant before the amazed and horrified eyes of a group of tourists.

How was an orca able to defeat the primal king of the ocean? A shark travels and hunts from the instinctual information of his limbic system. Orcas live in ornate and complex communities. They learn and grow through language. Orcas tell each other stories. It was the creative use of her ancestral tales that made the orca the victor that day.

When an orca tells a story, does she ever come to the end of her song and fall into the inky dark of her own great mystery? I wonder if she resonates with a language that can reach beyond the dragons to the beauty and destruction of a life well lived, to the freedom of being lost and the wild, catastrophic pleasure in being found.

That would be one great story.

One year ago today, I wrote the first entry to this blog. It has taken me on quite a journey. Here’s to the uncharted mysteries of life.

November 15, 2013 8

Unbroken Line

Morning dawns
Spring’s breath has left the buds
to follow her time-worn path
This unbroken line
Back to the cold of winter

New from old
Old to new
With stories on their tongues
And hearts across their sleeves
The ancient women sing

For winters past and coming springs
The whisper of a lover’s game
Under a sun chased moon
To press time westward across the sky

A woman’s breath beneath her hand
The guarded slip of her tongue
Stories played in a hidden heart
while winter sighs around her fire
This aging woman sings

For winters past and coming springs
The whisper of a lover’s game
Under a sun chased moon
To press time westward across the sky
Survivors in unbroken line
Drawn from me to you

November 6, 2013 2

The Northern Lights, Part One: The Wolf

Long ago, in the land of our ancestors across the sea…

A woman in an emerald cloak drifted through the snow, down a white path that snaked through a thick forest. She was alone. No one had come with her because no one knew where she was. All her life, she’d heard the forest wasn’t safe, but it would be better to die than to go on living as she had been. She didn’t know what she was searching for in the forest. She didn’t know what she was running from in the village either. She only felt it. A knowing that there had to be something more. It called to her on the wind. The wild wolves answered, and suddenly she needed to answer it too. She needed it so badly that it didn’t matter what might come of her.

The song of the wolves danced along the frozen North Wind. They sang of the night, and the pure white snow, and the lonely moon grown full with waiting from above. As if conjured by their plaintive call, she came to a place where the trees formed a long arch above the path, like a snowy cathedral that glittered in the moonlight. A pack of silver wolves stood sentry at the far end, weaving a web of deadly confidence.

My goodness, they will hurt me, she thought. I will die here all alone.

But she had been hurt in the village too, and lonesome, although she was always surrounded by her people. On that path with the wolves, fear made her blood race, and she felt alive.

“So beautiful,” she whispered. “So fatal. I will grow, or I will die.”

“You won’t die today,” A young man stood over her. His hair was cut haphazardly, as if he’d done the job with his knife and no mirror, but it shone as silver as the wolves and the moonlight. He carried a large wooden shield on his back and the horned helmet of a warrior under his arm.

How had he interrupted her solitary path? She never wanted him to look at her like that again, and she wanted him to always look at her like that. Like the unknown forest, how his eyes promised her life and danger.

“Who are you?” she asked.

“I am a traveler.” He shrugged, but the corners of his mouth grew tight, and she wondered if he had traveled much farther and longer than that shrug let on. She only dreamed of travel and yet to him it seemed like a burden. “I am many things to many people. Who are you?”

“I am Evelyn. I mean nothing to anyone.” It was impossible for her to shrug away the secret that she had just left being a daughter, and that she was intended to be someone’s wife. Those both meant something to someone. The truth was that she was the one who didn’t know the meaning of any of it. That felt like an unworthy sentiment, and she looked down so he would not see her go red.

Cuts and bruises ran over his hands and into his fur-lined coat.

“Are you hurt?” She reached out and touched a clotted wound. What made her do that? What made her ache to think he felt pain?

“Only a little. Nothing that won’t heal. Are you hungry? Are you cold?” The way he said it, not like she was a child, the way she felt at home, but as if he had a giant heart and he really saw her standing in front of him. Like a woman should be noticed, full and real.

“Only a little.” She smiled.

He returned it with a small, lopsided grin that made her grow warm right through her heart.

“I am very far from home,” he said. “I don’t have much to offer you, but there is a cave just around the bend. I’ve got dry wood, and I could build you a fire.”

“Yes.” She hadn’t really, honestly said yes to anything for a very long time.

“I see the richness of your cloak, and I’m worried it won’t be enough for you.”

Richness. Comfort. Plenty. She’d had every one of them in abundance, but none had given her the warmth she gained from his crooked grin. She reached up and kissed him on the corner of his mouth.

“Come on,” he said.

They walked together to his cave. He moved toward her, so close she could feel his heat and smell the foreign spice of his skin.

“I am brave in battle.” He put his hands on her shoulders. “But you frighten me.”

“Why would I frighten anyone?” She wasn’t afraid, not now that she had said yes and meant it. She liked the moment just as it was with the promise of discovery spread out in front of her. It would never be like that again, with everything right on the edge of beginning.

“I am afraid to part with you.” His face grew sad again, as it had when he spoke of being a traveler.

Evelyn nodded. She knew what it felt like to always be waiting for the hurt to come. “I was afraid of the wolves in the same way. They captivated me, but I knew they could hurt me.” It was worth the risk. She stepped in closer to him. “I’ve never done this before. Have you?”

“I don’t think so. Not like this.”

She smiled. He kissed her.

Neither of them left the cave, not for a very long time.

One night, Evelyn woke and watched the warrior sleep next to her. His profile glowed gently in the firelight. He looked so much more a boy than a man. Sleep had taken the edges of worry from his face, but a single tear slipped from his eyelid and slid down onto his temple. She put her lips against it and tasted the salt of that tear. Her heart grew so big she could hardly breathe.

My goodness, I have fallen in love, she thought. He will hurt me. I will die here all alone.

When morning came, and the sun pressed out the shadows and the mysteries, she was afraid to tell him how she felt.

Time passed. The wind and the wolves stopped howling. The cave echoed with the rush of melting snow. Evelyn watched the warrior’s face grow distant, as if he were listening to something far off beyond the newly budding trees. She felt the coming hurt, waiting to tear out her heart with the same deadly beauty as the pack of silver wolves that had stopped her on the path.

“I’m cold,” she said. “Will you put more logs on the fire?” As long as he kept the fire going, he couldn’t be leaving.

He did not look at her as he put them slowly, one by one into the flames. “It is time for me to leave. These are the last logs I will ever put on this fire I built for you.”

“Why can’t you stay with me? I want you to stay.”

“Because the snow has turned to water. The dead of winter has turned to the life of spring. That is change. I have heard the thrumming call to battle, and I always answer that call. It is as much a part of me as what I was here with you.”

“I thought you said you were afraid to lose me.”

“I am afraid to lose the warmth of your touch, and the way you look at me, and the way you notice life’s simple beauty. Even worse, I am afraid you won’t understand that I have to go. I have no choice. I am afraid you will be so angry that I will lose your love.”

“You don’t know that I love you.” If he did, he would know how vulnerable she was.

“Yes, I do know you love me.” He put his arms around her and pulled her close to him. She felt the muscles of his chest move beneath her hands. It seemed impossible that she was about to lose the familiarity of his form. “Before we met,” he said, “you knew how to find the beauty in life. You don’t need me for that.”

“I don’t want to live without your touch.”

“You will live all the same. You found me with a pack of wolves, Evelyn, but I am the lone wolf. Please let me go.”

“I wanted you to stay forever.”

“Forever isn’t possible here on earth, and believe me you wouldn’t want an unchanging forever even if I could give that to you.” He smoothed the copper hair from her face. “Do you remember the first day we met, how I built you this fire?”

“Yes.” She forced the word through the pain in her heart.

“I will build you a great fire in the Heavens. The largest and brightest you have ever seen. It will be my gift to you. For your love and for showing me how beautiful this world can be. I had forgotten that beauty a long time ago. My fire will always show you where I am, and how to find me when you are done with the life you were intended to live.”

“But I want to come with you now.” Impossible. It would be impossible to move through the world without his touch and his voice.

“Your story isn’t over yet. Someday you will come tell it to me, and I will hang on every word.”

He kissed her. She tried to smile.

A cloud of ravens flew through the cave. And he was gone.

To be continued…

The story continues: The Northern Lights, Part Two: The Path

October 22, 2013 7

A Tale of Guinevere and Lancelot

Queen Guinevere William Morris This work of art is in the public domain — Queen Guinevere
William Morris
This work of art is in the public domain

Guinevere
Soft and lost
Naïve and wise
Stood on the street corner
Watching poetry fly
up toward the street lamps
like moths to that last hope
That dangerous burning promise
When Lancelot happened by

Oh, hey there, Guinevere
Hey, friend of mine
Imagine running into you like this
your letter fresh in my pocket
Unanswered and waiting
Naïve and wise
I was going to write
I’d have written so well
but I’ve been so busy
Didn’t you hear?
I’ve gone on a quest
I’m finding the Holy Grail

She tried to pass him
but he pulled her close
So lately familiar

Lancelot, don’t
Don’t stand so near me
We can’t collide anymore
I never knew you at all
I knew you like I shouldn’t
How you shed your clothes
The first time I asked
And I saw what you thought of me
Alive and real and unmasked
But now my words
My heart
Hidden there in your pocket
Exposing the colors
The me I think I am
I showed you mine
But you won’t give me a peek
Not of your heart
You won’t undress that far

Hey, friend,
said Lancelot
Don’t think it doesn’t matter
But my silence is the kinder story
Than a lie about the contents of my heart
A heart I hardly know

Don’t mind me,
said Guinevere
Don’t stand there watching, Lancelot
I’m just falling
One foot in front of the other
Like learning
Like walking
And Baby, a woman
She can walk all night
Until she comes to that morning light
Where the sky grows soft
and the pillars sleek
That man-made building between her streets
How it can touch her sky
and make her breathe
I know you know that feeling
You have shown me

But I was falling from the start, Lancelot
When my sins came spilling
All at once into your lap
And you said…
I’d have asked you anyway

My god, I thought
Here he is
A man who can make me breathe
A man who will take me as I am
I fell
One foot in front of the other
Until you found me here

Oh, Guinevere
My friend
Where is that woman I held?
Wild and impetuous and free
You will run me off with girlish fear
Don’t look for my white horse now
I’ll still make you breathe
We’ll find some other convenient time

Lancelot
Soft and lost
Older and wiser
Stood on the street corner
His face unmasked in the summer sun
No lover’s shadows to hide behind
Just a man
of lost intentions
of empty promises
of wayward dreams
Just a man
in civil war with disappointment
and the brilliance of his mind
and the goodness of his heart

Guinevere
There in front of him
Her heart and Camelot destroyed
Nowhere left to run
Knowing everything
Coming to her own wasted truth
I’d have asked him anyway

I’m late, said Lancelot
I’ve got a grail to chase

Sometimes, a man
He comes up empty handed
Nothing to hold but his own manhood
When a Guinevere happens by
A woman to fill with his empty time
That sacred gift
That faith for free
Consecrated at her private alter
Isn’t that what holy means?
And isn’t she a vessel?
Isn’t she that grail?
Hidden there in plain sight
Right in front of him

But, Lancelot
He turned away
Sometimes, a man
He’s out for the quest
He looks around another corner

Sometimes, a woman
She swallows regret for her pride
She learns to offer the final empty lie
I’ll see you later
Guinevere called after Lancelot
When she really meant goodbye

September 13, 2013 4

An Excerpt from My Novel: The Keeper’s House, Chapter 37

Synopsis: The Keeper’s House is based on the Celtic myth that beneath their skins, seals are a beautiful lost race of humans called the Selchie (or Selkie). See The Story of the Queen and the Selchie for my own take on this myth. In previous chapters, sixteen year old Nula O’Malley’s solitary life on Lighthouse Island takes a surprising turn when she develops a budding romance with her only friend Sam. When Sam is lost at sea, Nula uses her hidden seal skin to find him, a choice that will leave her permanently tied to the life of a Selchie. During her journey to save Sam, Nula meets Baruch, who is also a creature from Celtic myth. Baruch is a Fin, powerful sorcerers and shape shifters (and supposedly quite alluring to human women). I’ve imagined the Fin as angels of the sea, with fins like wings on their backs. These two romantic interests represent Nula’s choice between the familiar world of the lighthouse and the lure to discover the mysterious world beneath the waves…although neither can offer her true destiny…the story only she can tell…

“Didn’t he ever think it would have been better if he never met Maria, and neither of them had been hurt?” I thought of how much easier it would be to step back in the ocean if there was no one to leave behind.

Mother smiled. “I don’t know about that. I can tell you that among the seal folk, we do not say ‘falling in love’. We say ‘learning to swim’ because love is like finding the warmth in a current that points you toward your destination.” Mother reached out and tucked a section of my hair behind my ear. A simple gesture, but it brought me warmth.

“When your Sam was in my arms that day I named him, I was pregnant with you. I saw him the way you would. I felt it in my heart that you two would teach each other to swim.”

“I don’t know that Sam loves me.”

“There is one way to find out, but it is frightening. It might be even harder than the journey you just faced.”

“You mean I have to tell him how I feel.”

“…or accept that you may never really know. And then there’s Baruch.”

“Baruch is different. He really did teach me how to swim. I’d like to find out what he truly means to me, but, what am I offering either of them really? I can’t even know that yet.”

“Oh, Nula, there you have your current, right in that question.” She stood up. I knew she would leave. I didn’t want her to, but I could not say it. “You should go home now. Tell your father I will see him soon. Tell him I could not be more proud of you, and I will never be far. I love you, Nula. Never waste a chance to say those words.”

She dove into the water, and I watched her, nothing more than a shadow beneath the moonlit waves. I followed her shadow until it disappeared, and I was alone.

I walked back to the keeper’s house. The beacon pulsed as always, one long, two short, one long. I felt torn, anxious to see Da and know Sam was safe but hesitant and shy to present myself so transformed in front of them. How would I tell them I might choose a path that took me away from them? I stood at the top of the wood steps to the little beach, lingered under the moon and listened to the ocean’s gentle lullaby.

I closed my eyes and felt him out on the waves.

Baruch.

I was happy to see him and have him as an excuse to stay out in the night a bit longer before I faced my family. I ran down to the beach but stopped short of the water, uncertain what might happen if I were to cross that line. Baruch stood in a bright silver boat that he steered with a long, silver staff. He floated across the surface like a twin of the luminous moon, and the sea lifted him from shoulder to shoulder until the boat rested on the beach before me. Baruch leapt onto the sand. He carried a bow and a pack of arrows strapped to his back.

“You look like a Selchie,” he said. His face was as fierce and unreadable as always.

“Maybe. I doubt it will be as easy as that.” I shrugged and the movement sent fire hot pain from the wound in my shoulder. I clenched my jaw to keep myself from crying out.

“It rarely is.” I saw him read the pain in my face. He lifted my sealskin cloak and let it fall behind my shoulders.

“My goodness Nula, what happened to you?”

“Ach, don’t touch it! You’ll make me see black again.”

“It looks like a bite.” He ran his thumb along the edge of it.

“It is a bite.”

“What bit you?”

“Myself. It’s my own bite.”

He tilted his head.

“I had to improvise,” I groaned. “Now, please stop touching it. The pain takes my breath away.”

“Brave girl.” There was almost a gentleness and awe to the way he said it.

Baruch leaned forward and held my shoulder steady in the palm of his hand.

“You’re hurting me awful,” I cried.

He didn’t answer. Instead, he blew against my wound. His familiar warm tingle moved down my arm. The pain was worse at first, but then it tumbled away on the force of his breath.

He stood. “You’ll have a scar.”

I looked down at the circle of angry red puncture wounds. “Oh, it is going to be ugly.”

“No.” Baruch took me by the shoulders again, but this time there was no pain to it. He angled me into the moonlight. “I like your scar best of all of you. It’s a part of your story.”

We stood in an awkward silence under the moon.

“Thank you for coming here tonight, Baruch. You are a good friend.”

“I am your friend, but I didn’t just come here to see you safely home. I came because I need your help.”

“My help?”

Baruch took my arm and led me down to the boat. I stood on tip toe and peered inside, careful to keep my feet safe of the water.

And there lay Mrs. O’Malley. Not the young, copper haired woman I’d seen in Tir na Nog, but the old one I’d always known. Her gray braids tumbled over her usual faded and patched brown dress. Her hands were folded over her chest, and she had a silver coin over each eye. She was still and radiant…

I’d never seen a human death before. Only the goats and chickens. I’d never felt the cool emptiness that hung all around what was once Mrs. O’Malley. I sat back on my heels and pressed my forehead against the cool metal of the boat.

“I found her like this,” Baruch said.

“I’m sorry.” I lifted my head. “You must be very sad.”

“For myself, I suppose I am. For Mother…she had such high hopes for the world beyond this one. I wonder if she will find what she is looking for.”

“You mean Erinan. Your father.”

Baruch looked out over the water. “Yes.” He put his hand on the ornate silver dragon that wound its way up the prow of the boat. “I wanted to give her a proper funeral. The kind that would have meaning to her. I couldn’t think of anywhere else to go, or of anyone else who could appreciate what it meant and stand beside me.”

“Yes. I do know what it means.”

“I couldn’t think of anyone else I wanted to stand beside me.” Before I could answer, he turned away and gave the boat a shove. It shot out into the sea and cut through the thick surf as if it were pushed by a thousand hands. It drifted away from us beyond the waves to the open water.

Baruch pulled out an arrow, fitted it into the bow and pointed it toward the sky. When he pulled back on the bowstring, the tip of the arrow caught fire and arced across the night. It fell like a whisper into the boat.

There was a moment when nothing happened, and then the flame took hold and blazed to life. The fire rose up and reached orange and red arms out to the night like a prayer.

Baruch opened his arms wide and called out over the waves.

Open your eyes

Find me in the wild ocean

Find me in the burning flame

Unravel me and spread me across the sky

Like a string of stars

The horizon swallowed the boat and the flame little by little until all was silver and peace again.

“That was beautiful,” I whispered. “Thank you for coming tonight.”

“You already said that.”

“Now I mean it more than twofold. Thank you.”

Baruch looked up toward the keeper’s house. “I am sure you are anxious to see your family…and Sam.”

Da and Sam did tug at the back of my mind, but I was also disappointed that the moment I’d just shared with Baruch was gone. “Baruch…”

He put up a hand. “I need to say something that you might find biased coming from me. I offer it up for consideration because I think it is for your own happiness. Sam might love you, but how long could he be happy on this island? He has his destiny as much as you have yours. Would you really risk so much to bring him out of the water, just to offer him a life by the sea? And if you left the sea entirely… went away with him… what would become of you? Would you be the girl he knows right now?”

“I was thinking…well…what if…”

Baruch stuck his raised hand in front of me. “Here, Nula,” he said quickly, “let’s shake hands as friends.”

“You are going to shake my hand and leave?” I asked, but I had wanted so much more from our parting.

“That is what human friends do when they part, is it not?”

“I wouldn’t know.” I put my hand in his. The usual current of warmth moved between us and I knew, now that I’d experienced Tir na Nog and the magic of the sea, that there was more between us than that. Baruch must have felt it too, because he pulled me toward him, wrapped his arms around me and held me close against his chest. He smelled of the sea and the air but also of the sweet flowers and rich soil of Tir na Nog. It was familiar and mysterious all at the same time. We stood there, the two of us, leaned against one another as the sky grew dusky with morning and the world turned toward goodbye.

“When I first saw you…” Baruch paused. “When we first met, I felt right away that there was something kindred between us. In the beginning, I wanted you so badly, I’d have done anything, said anything, behaved any way that would allow me to possess you. Yet every time I came close to your body and your time, I’d inexplicably stop myself.”

“Because it isn’t really what you want…”

“Oh, no. I want both of those things very much. Desperately sometimes, but there is something I want even more.” He pulled away and put his hand on my chest. “I want more than one small piece of your heart. I wish for you to know with complete certainty that I am the one for you. I don’t know if I deserve it, but I wish it.”

“You do deserve that.” I knew as I said it that it meant I was nowhere near ready to discover the other side of his kiss.

He stepped away from me but held my gaze. The energy of our embrace still hummed between us.

“Aren’t you going to say you hope I find the story only I was meant to tell?” I asked.

“You’ve learned a great deal about the ways of the sea folk, but no, I will not wish that for you. I don’t have to wish. I know you will find your story.”

“Then can I say that I hope that our stories will lead us to the same place at the same time again someday?”

“Maybe someday,” he said, and there was almost a smile in it, “we will meet in Tir na Nog.”

“What will you say to me when you see me there?”

“I don’t know. What does a human man say when he wishes to court a woman?”

“Now that…I really have no idea.” I laughed uncomfortably.

“Well, then maybe I will just say, ‘Are you that Nula?’”

I laughed again, but this time it felt deep and real. “Do you really know so many Nulas?”

“That isn’t what I would mean,” Baruch shrugged. “Good bye.” He started to wrap his fins around himself.

“Baruch, wait…”

He let his fins fall.

“My answer is yes. I am that Nula. I always will be.”

“I know.”

I put my palm against Baruch’s cheek. He spread his fins wide. The light grew brighter all around him, it engulfed him, and he was gone.

September 3, 2013 2

A Letter to my Daughter on Life, Love and Growing Pains

To My Beautiful Daughter,

You will be the hero of your own story. ..

Your best friend will be the hero of her story. Your teachers, coaches, boyfriends and rivals will all play the lead role in their own adventures too. We are heroes among heroes, all of us living out our call to adventure. That is the most brilliant and the most confusing part of life. Our villains aren’t always villainous, and while we might accept that there are dragons to slay, it’s harder to admit that once in a while we become someone else’s dragon (which doesn’t feel very heroic). At some point, wonderful as you are, you will love a worthy person or two who will not find it in their heart to love you back. How can the hero not be loved by all? If you are anything like your mother, you will occasionally rage at heaven for such injustices. Isn’t the journey hard enough?

The truth is that your heart will be broken. It will hurt like hell, you will swear never to do it again, but I hope you will. I am 41 years old, and I’m still capable of a broken heart. I wouldn’t have it any other way. My heart breakers have been some of my best teachers. That doesn’t mean they were all at their best. Some were wonderful but just not right, others were real shits. I’ve been lied to, fooled, had a man claim he was my friend only to leave right when I needed a friend the most. I spent a long time trying to discover why, until I realized that what matters is the lessons in myself they gave to me. I have been a fool for love. Astoundingly foolish. Silly. Obsessed. Shy. Frightened. Blind…but if I’d never been any of the above, I wouldn’t have discovered that I am also sexy, smart, funny…and abundantly willing to take a risk. I love a great adventure, and I will dust myself off (eventually) when I fall. Remember when you lose someone who was special to you that their leaving doesn’t mean they weren’t a gift. Remember that no quality can be special in someone else unless it was special to you first and foremost. Let them go and pray they find everything they are looking for.

You will break hearts too. You will be someone else’s lesson. There are times in my life when I have not been at my best. I’ve been wonderful but just not right, and I’ve been a real shit. At some point in your life, you have to take a look at that part of the journey as well. I have lied, and I have fooled, and I have left a man right when he needed a friend the most. Those were also lessons in myself.

All it takes is one look at you to realize how short I’ve fallen in my definition of love. It isn’t simply that I would give up my own life for you. At the end of the day, that’s as biological as it is spiritual in nature. The amazing and incomprehensible part is the unconditional gift you have given me. Yes, I know we fight, but I know I can be unreasonable, nutty, tired, a failure or a success, and you will still love me and count on me. Of all my gifts, that is the most rare and precious.

I won’t lie to you. This life, this growing up can be painful. Do you know what else hurt like hell? The day you were born. Opening a body up, stretching it to its extreme in order to birth a brand new person is unavoidably painful. I can’t think of anything more symbolic of every new stage in life. Our hardest and most painful days are the days we stretch and open. The natural process of a new creation. There is a moment in childbirth when a woman doubts her ability to make it to the end. That moment is called transition, and it is an age old sign that the last phase has come. A baby is about to be born. Those moments in life when you are sure you can’t do it anymore…wait, and remember that it is a sure sign that the miracle is about to happen. Trust me, it will be worth it.

Be the midwife to your own life. See your pain as your ability to create something beautiful and new and never seen before. Remember that love is as much about letting go as it is about holding dear. Life is a great adventure. Sometimes you have to fall in order to discover the path to the top. In love and life, take the risk and say what you mean. You don’t have to live with anyone else’s regrets but your own.

And always, above all else, always remember that this strange and wayward soul you picked as your mother loves you with all her heart.

Love,

Mom

August 28, 2013 21

Grand Central Station

Step down
Into the caves of modern man
Weave through the blur of impatient colors
Stand in the marbled gleam of negative space
Inside the hurried devotion to the iron god

There
Beneath the clock
Two almost lovers stood like living art
She took the fabric of his shirt
Pulled him to her
Wished him back through time

He kissed her
Will we meet again?
He asked her
We always meet
She said
Meeting isn’t the hard part

There
Where time moves forward
Lovers part like the Red Sea
The miracle of discovery
The intangible goodbye
Woven through the blur of impatient colors
Lost in the gleaming marble of negative space

But the clock remains
Held hostage by a thousand parting words
Words that whisper along shining walls
That trip down stairs
Through the tunnels to the hidden tracks

There
Always there
Beneath the clock

Words
Mingled in the echo
The rhythm of anonymous life
In the caves of modern man
Two lovers like living art

There
She let him go
Let him fall in devotion to the iron god
But if we do meet again
She said
If we meet again
I will make you dance

Every time I am in Grand Central Station, I am touched by the little stories, the comings and goings, right there in that moment inside the hurry to get someplace else. Photo: — Every time I am in Grand Central Station, I am touched by the little stories… the meetings and the partings… right there in that moment inside the hurry to get someplace else.

August 19, 2013 10

Finding Words

No words today. Nothing but the wonder. I hope I find an answer soon. I have a story I want to tell, but I want to use real words that mean the same outside of me as they do in my heart.

Where is the profound? Where is the dangerous? Where can I find a Joan of Arc or a Guinevere or a Madam Bovary…where are our beautifully flawed female characters who set out on a quest to find themselves but don’t end up with failure as grand as their dreams?

I wonder how we can send a robot to explore Mars, but can’t seem to do more that skim the surface of the people we touch. Why do we measure each other in commodities and usefulness?

I wonder because even brave sacrifice can lead to weakness.

I wonder because I keep playing out the same old human stories, and I have yet to come to one ending that is uniquely mine. How can I endow a character with anything more than I am able to give myself in my own life?

I wonder about the ache of standing between personal happiness and the happiness of the people I love. When both can’t be met, which one answers the real meaning of life?

I wonder about the times I’ve fallen through trap doors in my choices and glimpsed life as it might have been. How I came back changed, like a child who returns home an adult but is expected to wear those same clothes of her younger self. They don’t fit anymore, but she wears them because she loves everyone too much to stop playing the child.

I wonder why most of us walk around like actors costumed in our own bodies while the real characters inside us live unseen. What a shame when life is short and none of us know what kind of chances we’re offered after we take our last breath.

But how to say it? How to find the words?

Words, words, libraries and kindles and an internet full of words but they do us no good because most of them are so safely vacuous we don’t even remember what was said. I’m right back where I started, searching for words that won’t come up empty. I hope I find them soon. I have a story to tell, but why? No words today. Nothing but the wonder.

August 14, 2013 2

The Keeper’s House

Chapter 1

The ocean inhaled. It rose toward a pale half moon that hung heavy and low in the dark sky. A line of foaming waves rolled back from the shore like a beckoning hand. The lighthouse pulsed in rhythmic beams of illumination.

One long.

Two short.

One long.

Smooth, wet sand sprang to life under the beacon’s ray. A small bit of white appeared, half buried in the distance. It winked at me in the light, and I sighed. Another of the ocean’s tiny temptations. There was no way to resist.

I ran toward it, and the hair on my neck stood upright, making me aware of the pull of the tide. I snatched the small white shell from the sand and held my breath. The wave rolled against me and soaked the edge of my nightgown. Same as always, salt water burned my skin. The burning hurt, but it also hummed with a pulsing temptation. My mind went out to the dark depths of the ocean, cold and terrifying.

It would steal me away.

Maybe I wanted it to.

I lifted the edge of my nightgown and ran back to the beach, splashing through the surf as fast as I could to the safety of dry land. The heaving ocean was pearlescent under the low moon and the beacon, glittering like a fairy world full of beauty and remorseless power. I loved it as much as I feared it.

The shell felt cool in my hand. I wiped a clump of sand from its center with the wet edge of my nightgown and held it to my ear. Da said that no matter how far a shell traveled from the sea, it would always carry the song of the waves inside. Sam said it was nothing more than air.

Sam.

I looked back toward the horizon. He was right on the other side of it, only a few miles out on the mainland, sleeping and dreaming of who knew what. I wondered, not for the first time, if he ever thought of me as I thought of him in the times between our seeing each other. Surely he had better things to think of, his mainland friends and school and plans for the world.

A seal cried out long and low. I shivered.

The keeper’s house stood on a hill overlooking the ocean. Although the windows looked dark and empty compared to the wide expanse of moonlight at my back, there was a warmth within that drew me across the beach and up the old wood steps. I climbed in through my bedroom window and dropped the shell with the rest of my collection on the little shelf Da made me for my birthday. Without bothering to light the kerosene lamp, I fished for my clothes on the dark floor of my room, slipped on an old work shirt, a hand-me-down from Sam, and then my usual overalls.

I sat on the edge of my bed and fought the need to sleep. I couldn’t stand to go into my lonely dreams, always the same, of the cold endless water. Not again.

Da said there was a big battle that raged in the sky every dawn and dusk. Night fought Day and Day battled Night and every clash must be to the death. The victor got to cut loose the sky, so when Day won, he would take his sword and cut off the dark to make room for the Sun.

Sam said there wasn’t any truth in that. He said the Earth turned in a circle around the Sun and that’s what made it night or day.

When I told Da Sam’s scientific version of Night and Day, he said I wasn’t really listening if I couldn’t see for myself that they were one and the same tale. Something dies so that something else can be born, over and over again in a circle. Night and Day didn’t really have to carry swords to make that true.

It was a long wait, but sword or not, Day won his struggle yet again. The sky glowed faintly, and a golden halo appeared along the edge of the world. I stepped out of our long, low stone house. The old wooden door, rough under my fingers, was so familiar and real that it was easy to put the night behind me. Chickens and goats in the yard chattered and griped for food. Across the yard, the red lighthouse door was open, and so was the door to the supply shed that stood next to the lighthouse. Yellow light glowed inside the shed, and Da’s shadow moved from one side to the other. I gave the baby goat a quick kiss on the nose and then ran to help him. Da met me at the door. A deep, sorrowful moan filled the air. I stopped and held my breath.

“Just the seals, Nula. Same as always. They are sure to be holding court on the far side of the island,” Da said.

“I know,” And I did know, because in all my sixteen years I had heard the sound many times, “But it does take the heart across you to hear them.”

Da turned away from me, back to his work. “Aye,” he said softly, almost like he was answering himself. “They do take the heart across you.”

Da’s accent was thick with Irish. It rose and fell like the albatross when he hunts. It set him even further apart from the flat, nasal New Englanders who lived a few miles west of our island.

I grabbed a metal pail from the shelf behind me, threw a scoop of soap flakes and a handful of rags in the bottom and ran back up the hill to the house. I filled the bucket with rainwater collected in the cistern and turned back toward the lighthouse.

I lugged the frothing, soapy water to the red door as fast as I could without spilling. Da hovered above me as he wound up the spiral staircase with the heavy five gallon oil can. It made a dull metallic chime as it hit the stairs between each of his steps. The last nine steps were the only straight ones, but they were much narrower than the rest. It was hard for Da to get his large shoulders through, even without the oil can. He grunted and grumbled in Gaelic, both of us pretending I couldn’t understand the foreign curses.

I dropped my pail on the plank floor of the lantern room and wrung the rags out to attack the windows. Before I put the rag to glass, I greeted the vast water below me, as I had every morning of my life.

Unlike the dark world of my dreams, in daylight the sea from my bird’s eye view was vibrant and ever changing. Sometimes the sea consumes her color in her own emotion. Tranquil blue for a day when she is happy with the world she is wrapped around, or frustrated gray when she rages and threatens to destroy the fragile beings in her embrace.

But days like this one were the best, when the sea let her colors spread out the way they wanted. Sparkling light blues and greens where the water was deep, with little white caps of foam that came and went along the surface. Just below me was my favorite. Dark granite rocks reached from the base of the lighthouse into the sea like the arthritic hand of an old woman. I loved the way waves churned and sprayed between those gnarled fingers. Nathanial and Sam brought four bottles of green olives to us once. They were the closest I ever came to tasting the color of the water that danced within our rocky shore.

The glass lens of the beacon reflected the ocean’s green hues. It took up most of the space in the lantern room and turned slow and sure, like a woman who knows her new clothes are worth a good look. It was hard to believe men had built something so beautiful and exacting, as fine-looking as it was life-saving. To think that a human mind had made up such a thing, to know a human hand put it all together, well, I was in awe of it. Even just to wash the windows made me proud of my little part. The man who invented that lens died before he knew he’d changed the world. I thought that was sad, but Da said when you put your mind or your sweat into something long enough, it became a part of you and you of it. He could think of no finer bit of immortality than to live on as a piece of the beacon that brought men home.

I went back out to the yard to collect eggs while Da rewound the clockwork. With four eggs in my apron pocket, I climbed back up to the house and cracked them into an iron skillet. When they began to sizzle, I stirred the pot of oats and started water to boil for coffee.

The old door moaned when Da pushed it open and stepped inside. He pulled off his cap and dropped it next to him at the table. I flipped the eggs out of the pan onto plates and then took my place across from Da. The pock marked oak table smelled of linseed oil. The only sound in the room was the scraping of our forks against our plates and the dull ring of my spoon as I swirled goat’s milk into my coffee. It was a silent room, but it wasn’t uncomfortable to sit quiet with Da. I pulled back the empty chair where I had stashed a book, thumbing through to the page where I left off.

“You went through that one fast.” Da said.

“Oh, it was an easy read,” I shrugged. “Sam borrowed it from Mrs. O’Malley for me. I have to give it back when they come today.”

Da stood up with his plate and mug. He took them to wash in a bucket of water on the counter.

I turned back to my page, where the mermaid lamented, “…Oh if he could only know that! I have given away my voice forever, to be with him.” I snorted. She might have thought that through better.

“What book is this?” Da leaned over my shoulder.

“The Little Mermaid and Other Tales.” It’s by Hans Christian Anderson. I think he’s Danish. Mrs. O’Malley thought I might like it.”

“I wasn’t aware that the Danish were so humorous.”

“Oh, it’s just a bit dramatic is all. It’s about a little mermaid who wants to be human so that she can love a prince and have an immortal soul.”

“What becomes of her?”

I was surprised Da was so interested in my story.

“Well, I haven’t quite finished, but it doesn’t look good for her. A sea witch took her voice in exchange for legs so she isn’t really able to tell the prince she’s the one who saved him. He thinks another girl did. If he marries someone else, the Little Mermaid will die and fade away into sea foam.”

“Sea foam?” Da patted his breast pocket in search of his tobacco pouch and looked out the window. “Is that really the worst of fates?”

“She won’t have an immortal soul.”

“There is a great deal of soul in the ocean if you ask me.” I felt Da over my shoulder scanning the words on the page.

“Not a bad little tale.” He patted my shoulder. “You still won’t go to the school? I could handle things here on my own.”

“Oh, no you couldn’t Da. Besides, I like how things are. I don’t want to go off to school at my age. Sam brings me anything interesting.”

“You shouldn’t have to lean on him for your learning.”

“I don’t lean on him, Da, I just trust him to sort through the boring stuff for me.” I smiled up at him, but he didn’t smile back.

“There is more to life than you can experience on this little island.”

“I know that.” I held up my book and waved it in front of him. “I’ve read it in plenty of books, but I’m still quite content to give myself time.”

Da patted me on the shoulder. “Time,” he said with a grunt.

I turned back to my book and thought nothing more of it. I had time in abundance. What did it matter to me?

August 5, 2013 5

Finding Home

Two weeks ago, I sat down to write about taking a trip to my hometown. That post on the ups and downs of going home would not come. Maybe it wasn’t fully grown in my imagination yet. I ended up with a poem about secret gardens instead. When I lamented that the words had taken me so far from where I started, friend and fellow blogger Rob Taylor pointed out that there are many ways of defining home.

Home. The place where I was born. Bakersfield, California is still full of stucco and Spanish arches and oilfields and orange groves. The ghost of my girlhood self runs wild-haired and barefoot over the manicured lawns. She steals cherries from a tree that overhangs an alley so she won’t have to take the time to go home for lunch. She climbs fences and dreams of princes. She looks west and plans to run away to the ocean so she can swim across the horizon to the world on the other side. She believes that when she grows big enough she’ll be able to reach up and touch the stars. No matter what anyone tells her, she could spend every night sprawled on the grass watching those stars head in her direction.

I tried to touch her transparent edges, but she’s an elusive little gypsy girl. I sat on the porch of my grandmother’s house and watched her dance in the front yard. She asked me if I still want to know what is over the next horizon, and if I still believe someday I will touch the stars.

I opened my mouth to tell her no, but out fell a poem about secret gardens.

Home. My safe return. While on my trip, I had the chance to go snorkeling in the ocean. At first, I watched the sandy bottom undulate beneath me as we swam. Out beyond the waves, the bottom dropped, and the ocean grew wide and deep. There was too much of the water and too little of me. My head popped up. I tread water and gasped for breath. I lost my nerve. I couldn’t take care of myself out there. I couldn’t control the world around me. The current would sweep me away…

Home. My first story. Seven summers ago, I started writing. My daughter was still an infant then, and I was in bed nursing her. Somewhere between asleep and awake, an image popped into my mind of a girl and her father standing alone on a beach. I had the sense that the girl was waiting for love to come, and the father was waiting for love to return. They seemed so real and as barely out of reach as the stars I’d watched as a kid. What brought them to that lonely beach? How were they so close and so distant at the same time? I couldn’t stop wondering about them, and that day when my kids took a nap I sat down at the computer and started writing their story. My first novel, The Keeper’s House, was born.

In chapter one, sixteen year old Nula stands alone on a beach in the middle of the night. She fears sleep and the dreams that send her spiraling through the lonely, dark water. Nula watches the waves and listens to them whisper as the moon glows over the distant horizon. She feels the pull of the ocean, a tug on her heart. Maybe it will take her away…and maybe she wants it to.

Home. Friendship and romance. I have a friend who is currently entangled in a casual, long distance relationship. They go days without speaking to one another. Sometimes she fears that she has had her last time with him, that he will disappear from her life, but unless she makes dramatic changes to her own life, she isn’t in a position to ask for more. Why not just end it? She told me she has thought of that many times, but then she realized she likes him as much for his mystery as for his warmth. She likes him just as he is. Sometimes she misses the first days when they discovered each other from a distance and she left her lonely beach. Now here she is halfway to the horizon with no real way of knowing if she is going to get hurt. She keeps diving in because she has to know what is on the other side. She dives because she believes he is worth the discovery. One way or another, this relationship could pull her away from everything she knows…and maybe she wants it to.

Back to my day of snorkeling on the open ocean, terrified of this mysterious world that neither welcomed nor rejected me. I could return to the safety of the beach, or I could dive in and discover what was on the other side of my girlhood horizon. Ahead of me was the chance of danger, of being unprotected in a world I had no control over. I answered the ghost of my girlhood, and I dove.

Two hundred yards later, I was swimming with majestic sea turtles. One the size of my seven year old daughter swam right next to me, so full of simple beauty and grace. Those turtles and the chance to discover their world were worth the dive. The current didn’t take me or at least not the way I expected.

Maybe our real fear isn’t that what is hidden over the horizon will take us forever. Maybe our fear is that it will send us back changed in a way that redefines what it means to find home.

That got me thinking again about those stars I loved so much as a kid. Open just about any newspaper and you are bound to find a horoscope section. Who among us has not looked under our sign at least once for some guarantee of our future?

If the stars can tell our fortunes, I really don’t know. There is one way that human beings from all over the world have used the night sky for as far back as we can measure. The stars have always been a map to guide us home.

Dive in and discover what is on the other side. Swim the ocean or open your heart. There is no guarantee that you won’t get hurt, but the simple beauty and grace on the other side are worth the risk. Even when you have to go home again, the horizon will never leave you, but you have to let yourself be taken in order to find it. You can’t stay lonely on the beach and make a story worth the telling.

Read more here! Chapter 1: The Keeper’s House

July 29, 2013 4