how do you know it’s not the last straw,
that the ship has sailed,
that you have not made matters worse?
your guess is as good as mine
as we live and learn,
bite off more than we can chew
once in a blue moon.
easy does it, my friend,
full steam ahead,
you’ve got this,
you with bigger fish to fry—
it takes one to know one,
both of us joined at the hip,
right here on the same page,
come what may.
My mother cannot see my face
as I stand in the family room
five feet from her—you’re all shadow,
she says—sending a shudder through me
not only because her vision has been
dimming for years, but also because
I, too, now nightly deposit the same
brand of wishful drops in my eyes
that she has used for decades,
hoping to slow the unshakeable stride
of glaucoma. Perhaps her devoted
application has delayed what seems
inevitable, though she has long complained
that many restaurants are too dark—
and I agree—or that someone needs to turn
on more lights. And she understandably
balked when the ophthalmologist told
her that she could no longer drive safely.
I am one of her drivers now, as are my sister
and a few other women who chauffeur her
through her busy life. People look at photos
of the two of us, saying how much I look
like my mother. And though we do not see
the resemblance, I know that I carry her
hazel eyes, her DNA, her fierce independence.
I pray that somehow, behind my irises,
cosmic forces conspire on my behalf to—
please, eye gods—keep me seeing clearly.
Neither of us is ready to give up the light.
Though we have bailed out of exercise early
today—because the leaf blower man has
come to blow away the leaves on her lawn
where we work out to and with the oldies—
Marilyn comes inside, heading for her laptop
on the table by the living room window.
I sigh, seeing her there, this longtime writer,
her manicured red nails hovering over the keys,
her short-circuited brain recovering
day by day, week by week, watching her
return to herself, to those who love her,
to the world that she has chronicled
since she could first hold a pencil,
on countless pages, in journals
on paper and pixels, in many books.
And now she sits on the sofa reading
a memoir on her iPad by a woman who,
after concussion, had trouble reading.
Why can’t you read? the author asks herself.
You were in the Acorn group in second grade.
“I didn’t have any trouble reading,” Marilyn
says. “That would have been awful.”
She chats as she did in the before-stroke
times, better able to follow conversation,
though I still need to slow my speech
for her to catch my fastball words. I think
of her late husband’s dementia that utterly
destroyed his brain, her own on the mend.
Every time I’m with her, I find her more
herself, but, I suspect, she was never
not herself. No one can see the buttery
consistency of her brain floating
in its cradle of fluid, doing its good work
to repair itself bit by bit, synapses
making new connections, her brain
circuitry rewiring synapse to synapse,
creating new pathways,
one precious cell talking to another,
all by their clever, clever selves.
Given the choice
between love and not love,
between the harsh voice
and the gentle one,
it is prudent, you remind
yourself, to pause when
this one or that one is
annoyingly annoying,
and you want, more than
anything, to snap off their
head and chomp on it like
a female praying mantis
is wont to do after mating
with a hapless swain.
But then, you draw breath
and remind yourself that,
like you, all beings simply
want to be happy, that
all beings search for the
compassionate-hearted,
and, like you, cherish bits
of lovingkindness when it
appears—even from those
you barely know—from
the server who brings bright
lemon slices on a white plate
on a hesitantly sunny winter
afternoon for your water glass
because he remembers that
you like them. And you resolve
to choose love, to unearth some
submerged kindness from
your momentarily hardened
heart space, and offer it to one
before you now, because, truly—
could you bear to live without it,
even just a little?
for Dickie on his fifth rebirth-a-versary
The day you melted,
I witnessed the collapse
of a self, a candle burned
down to a puddle of wax,
a heap of humanity—
gone.
Yet strangers sprang
to reshape your melted
self into a new form,
and we learned that
resurrection is not
pretty.
But in the act of revival,
we become ones who
once again can bear light,
whose brightness cannot
be diminished—
who can be
reanimated,
re-formed—
our hearts reshaped
by grace and everyday,
imperfect human love,
into something we never
imagined we might be.
•••
You can read the stories of Dick’s cardiac arrest in Honolulu on Jan. 15, 2019, and the aftermath here.
•••
With our deepest mahalo, again and forever, to the AED Institute, Pamela Foster and Jenna Tanigawa, to Salesi Maumau, Claudio Alvarado, Camron Calloway, Chris Ohta, Andrew and Leona Boyd Doughty, Jan Lake, Mākena J. Ongoy, Dr. Nicholas Dang and the incredible staff and volunteers at Kaiser Moanalua Hospital in Honolulu, Cora Hoffmaster Johnson, Constance Raub, Danielle McKinney… and all our friends and family, whose support and love sustained us then and now.
It’s my month, I think, every time
I abbreviate it—not the one of my birth,
but my name, the Roman god of doorways,
beginnings, sunrises and sunsets.
One letter difference between his name
and mine to indicate entrance and,
yes, transitions, him with two bearded
faces looking in opposite directions—
both to the past and the future,
backward and forward. Two-faced, yes,
but not necessarily deceitful or
contradictory. In the spirit of duality,
I play with Janus words that hold
opposite meanings—dust, which can
mean the removal or application of it.
And now I’m thinking of cookies
dusted with confectioners’ sugar,
which leads me also to the notion
of wiping clean at the beginning of this
new year—to heed the impulse to
tidy up and organize at the same time
I want to burrow in, read, nap.
Janis as Janus—I claim my true nature
in this, my month, and yes, go in
search of dust cloth and cookie,
ready to embrace both.
I have thought for weeks
that now’s the time—
on these gray, cold days
with the narcissus shooting
their merry paperwhites skyward,
even the odd hollyhock clinging
to an unseasonably tall stalk—
that I must take up the clippers
and head to the back fence—
not to mention attend to the bed
in the front yard with roses
that I deadhead all summer—
to prune last season’s gangly stems
that provided unasked-for bounty.
Now, in January, a few crimson
blossoms nod their heavy heads
groundward as I ponder such
mysteries as roses in winter.
I have sometimes neglected to
prune them, hating to lop them
mercilessly, almost to the ground,
to make space for the yet-to-be,
to overcome my reluctance to
allow the dying to die, so that
what is gestating can—
with no help from me—
be born.
I used to wish that I’d ridden more
than bikes as a kid, or perhaps pedaled
my pink two-wheeler across the road
to the stables butting up to the state park,
and plunked down the dollar-fifty to ride.
I’d have needed lessons, tippy-over kid
that I was, and in those days no one sat
astride wearing a helmet. But still. Now
I wish I’d said yes to standing beside a being
who towered over me, full of power
and the ability to harm, should it want to,
but who—as with every equine I’ve had
the pleasure to meet since—looked down
at me from a lofty stance with kind brown
eyes, the kind that say to a child:
I can be your friend, especially if you open
your palm that hides apple slices or bits
of carrot that I will hoover into my mouth,
leaving your hand slick with slobber,
which you should know is just one way
I offer my gratitude and affection.
for Marilyn
On the brink, over the edge,
between breaths, heartbeats, tears,
underneath the weight of it all,
without what is needed, wanted,
you find yourself going round,
not necessarily in confusion,
but moving toward an unnameable
something, though you may not be able
to discern what—opposite of where you
thought you were, or should, or
wish to be. But if you look beneath,
beside, beyond—despite the difficulty
of the moment—something you’ve
long attracted crouches near.
Call it to you, even if you don’t
recall its name. It will come
carrying a gift in its teeth,
a generosity of spirit that you
have long offered to others, brought
back and dropped at your feet,
a little drooly, perhaps, but a
kindness nonetheless. Pick it up.
Pat the one who delivered it, who
looks at you now with adoring eyes.
Say yes.
each of you has written upon my body
the story of moments shared, in tenderness,
in urgency, tracing lines across my skin,
dropped kisses here and there and there—
so long ago that my memory cannot easily
summon it—but love stored in too-soon-
to-melt flesh holds it close,
deep in the marrow, tucked into cells
like the sweetest hugs—each encounter
a kind of kiss that returns
at the oddest times—like driving into
a winter sunset, one that begs me
to stop the car, pull over and
stand in the cold to commemorate
in pixels what can only truly be
registered by heart,
to feel a gasp at the gorgeousness
of last light that sends shivers of
recall down my spine,
a thank you on my lips that somehow
still remember yours and yours
and yours.
