Güd wrtr

The once-upon-a-time, the long-ago-but-not-forgotten.
The one who taught me how to kiss and sing harmony to his melody
as he played the guitar. The one who really taught me how to kiss
and quite a bit more, and whose young man muskiness lingered
in his sheets, the ones I couldn’t wait to return to. The one who
taught me to juggle because he had to learn as a theater major
before he ran away with a circus. The ones who taught me
to process film and print photos in a red-tinged darkroom.
(And a bit more in the dark rooms, too.) The one who taught me
how to catch a softball, which my father tried to do, but could not—
though he did teach me how to jack up a car and change a tire.
The one who loved me on an inflatable raft in a river.
The one who taught me never to leave a clear glass in the sink
when your boyfriend is visually impaired, and to always, always,
replace the cap on the toothpaste. The one who married me.
The one who takes me to Hawaii and the California coast
because he knows how much I love ocean, and buys me
my favorite socks and feeds my cats when I ask, and
feeds me, feeds me, feeds me, all of which are ways
Guys Say They Love You. And oh, the one who, in third grade,
was not a proper boyfriend but was the first boy I fell in love with
after he pointed out the stain on the back of my dress
and gave me his cardigan, saying, “Maybe you could
tie this around you,” so the stain wouldn’t show.
The ones whom I have not properly thanked. Until now.
Thank you, my dear, good men. Amen.

•••

(Especially to the one who died six years ago today and who came back
and who walks with me still, Dickie Dean, the one who has my heart
for all time.)

Oak trees arcing to the sky. Little girls learning to climb them.
No sidewalks to roller skate on. Across the road a path leading
to the big lake called Folsom made from a river called American.
Our swimming spot: Granite Bay. Fool’s gold embedded in rock,
loose in the sand, perfect for pocketing. The wooden motorboat
that Dad and Grandpa made from a kit. Tucked into its bow
two big skis and two little skis. A red flag on a stick to hold up
while a skier waits in the water. Flying across liquid cobalt
on two skis. Then on one. New best friend next door. Following
her down the path for a little explore. “Training” Fluffy’s kittens
to use the cat box. Playing with Sherry’s puppies in the back yard.
Climbing my favorite tree next to the playhouse. Settling with
notebook and pencil into the cradle of trunk and two long-armed
branches. Looking around. Listening for birds. Waiting.
Writing down what comes.

Life is grace. Sleep is forgiveness. The night absolves.
Darkness wipes the slate clean, not spotless to be sure,
but clean enough for another day’s chalking.

—Frederick Buechner, “The Alphabet of Grace“

•••

What if, overnight, someone leaves
some big, fat sticks of chalk in pastel
pink and blue and green on your porch,

and, as the darkness lifts, you find them,
along with a washed-clean sidewalk
in front of your house? Everything

has been forgiven as you’ve slept.
You get to start over with every dawn.
How can you resist? You pick up

your little bucket of color and go
to that fresh slate. And, though you
have no idea what you’ll draw,

you apply some blue, then pink,
then surround it with green,
and soon you’re awash in hues

glowing, intensifying every minute.
Touch your toes. Twirl.
You made that. Stand back.

Admire what showed up,
aware that it may disappear
with the night. Then you can

make it anew tomorrow
and tomorrow and tomorrow.
Like life. Again. Again.

Lucky, lucky you.

First, no one in the throes of devastation
knows how to do this. Stand amid the ash,
the blown-apart detritus of your life and cry.
Sob hard. You must empty the contents of your soul
onto the ground where you once lived and loved,
where your grandparents once lived and loved,
where your parents did, too. Where you made
a home/children/pets/family. Wail. Swear.
Collapse into the ash of what was. No way
to know what will come. How you go on.
Just the tiniest glint out of the corner
of a teary eye that somehow you will.

Allow for the unfolding of something you
can’t see. Don’t call it faith. Don’t call it hope.
Certainly don’t call it love, though it might
arrive as the offering of a stranger’s hand,
attached to one who brings a blanket,
a warm cup of comfort, who sits with you
and says, Tell me about it.

And you do. The story gushing like water
from the hoses that didn’t arrive in time,
like flames rising. Tell it all, especially
the ugly parts. Cry more. Wallow.
Don’t be your strongest self.

And then, drawing a deep, new breath, stand.
One foot moves. Then the other. Then the
first foot. Then the second. And there you are
walking away, yes, but also walking toward
what you cannot see under an umbrella of blue.
The smoke is clearing. Inhale deeply.
This is what starting over looks like.

•••

(With thanks to our dear friend and amazing photojournalist
Genaro Molina for the use of this striking photo.)

The ones who have vanished
or seem to have. Or I love
those who are easy to love—
often the four-footed, furry ones
who seem to adore us for
no good reason.

I often love best the words that
others have put on the page more
than my own. Especially when
they read them to me, and I
fall hard for them as if they
were a longed-for crush
fondly holding out a hand.

Often I love you best, and I’ll
think this as you tell me a story
over a dinner of leftovers that
you’ve warmed up and served
as if you’d labored long over
oven and stove and made it
specially for me.

But I don’t say so because
you’re in mid-story, and I know
that I tend to interrupt,
impatient to hear details
that you’re not ready to give
or that you might not have.

And so I watch you speak,
remember to drink in the color
of your eyes and the way they
crinkle at the corners, smile
at your hair that’s at that
just-right stage between
haircuts I give you in
my backyard.

And I think how I do, in fact,
love you best and most,
even if I forget to tell you,
trying as I am to absorb
every word of this utterly
ordinary moment that—
though I may one day
want it to—
will never come again.

though you were mostly gone,
every breath a great labor,

I thought of others who,
before liftoff, with great effort,

forced their parched lips to say
to those assembled:

I love you. You mean the world
to me. Thank you for being here.

You girls are the best things
that ever happened to me.

And as we watched, as we’d
been doing for days, I knew we

would not hear so much as a
whisper from you. Not merely

because you were past speech,
or that you had already traveled

beyond us into mystery, but also
because those were not your words.

And I wondered if, in the after—
if there is, indeed, an after—

you might have wished that
you had looked at the daughters

you bore—whom you must have
fussed over when we were babies,

whose fine hair you twirled between
your young fingers, who must have

watched us brand new beings sleep,
ones who had come through you—

if something in you, as you lifted on
the wings you’d grown, might have

wished for us to hear the words
that you could never say in life:

I love you. You mean the world
to me. Thank you for being here.

You girls are the best things
that ever happened to me.

And oh, that you heard us whisper,
Thankyouthankyouthankyou

for our lives, for all that you gave us.
You did good, Ma—you did well.

Yes, we love you, though we often
found it hard to do, even harder

to tell you, and somehow—
though we cannot know for sure—

we trust that you loved us, too.

Winter sunshine deceives us
into thinking that spring has arrived
in January, along with the narcissus

arrowing upward from cold earth,
blooming their fool heads off when
they have no business doing so.

But they do, I remind myself.
This is what gives us hope
in the soil of sorrow where

we’re momentarily planted.
I forget, as I look at the mud
lodged under my nails,

staining the creases of my
palms, that I can wash it
off with warm water

if I remember to do so.
That before long I will
loosen this hard-packed

dirt, allow it to crumble
like old paper into my hands,
then tuck in baby plants

that will grow as they will
with only a bit of water
and love.

As will I if I close my eyes
and tilt my chin toward
the warmth that our

greatest star pours into us
every day even when
we can’t see it.

Grief takes funny forms,
as we know, and when

a link arrived to a Peter Yarrow
video singing new lyrics

to his famous tune about how
the song of Puff came to be

(before, Yarrow says, he knew
about marijuana, so no, it’s not

that kind of puff), I didn’t yet
know that he’d died. But, still,

I found myself in tears
watching his face as familiar

as an old friend, especially
when he sings that Puff’s

no longer lonely, that little
Jackie Paper’s daughter visits,

“and the story has a happy end.”
I so hope that his did, too.

•••

With gratitude to the memory of Peter Yarrow,
as well as to still-with-us Paul Stookey
and the late Mary Travers, for all the music…
especially Puff.

Though I’d been bribing him
with yummy baby food for weeks,

after I added the magic powder
to help him relax in the carrier,

Maxi walked away. Of course.
You’re on to me, aren’t you?

I said at 6:30 a.m., too early for
both of us. But I left the moosh

in a dish by his tall cup of water,
which he has come to prefer in his

new room at my house, and I said
aloud to the companion cat spirits,

OK, you guys. Help here.
Dude needs a good clipping

to get all the mats off and
a good once-over by Dr. Sue,

who as a girl sat with Donna
and me in our mother’s house

with a fresh batch of six-week-old
kittens of Fluffy’s (a mini version

of Maxi, now that I think of it).
We’d diligently work to “train”

the baby kitties to use a litter box,
plopping them in the sand and

guiding a little forepaw to dig.
As if they didn’t have such instinct

hard-wired into their feline DNA.
And decades later Sue became

Dr. Sue, and decades after that
I’m driving the big guy an hour

up the mountain to see her and
her team, Maxi complaining

all the way. But his cry wavers
after a while, and I relax, too,

because Maxi did eventually
eat the doctored baby food.

I imagine that he’s growing
less fearful with every mile—

and me, too—as if, after all
these years, I’ve learned

a thing or three about the
mysterious minds of cats.

•••

With thanks to the original girl-next-door BFF
and veterinarian extraordinaire Dr. Susan Lester
and the great team at Four Paws Animal Clinic in
Nevada City, California, for their excellent medical
care as well as removing Maxi’s many mats.

Circling the labyrinth
on the first walk of the year,

I turn into the ascending sun,
stop, tilt my chin to welcome

the kiss of light through
bare-limbed trees,

and think of the beloveds
seen and unseen,

those here and gone,
as pilgrims walk the path,

turning and turning again
into slow epiphany.

I feel the stirrings of spirit,
the invitation to remain

open to what is waiting for all
all beings everywhere

held in the great symbiotic web
that sustains us. Love calls us on

as we walk through this life,
as we return in our turning,

as we receive the gifts of
a quiet, peaceful presence

nudging us through anguish
and grief, joy and laughter

on this new morning,
on every morning,

through every breath.
Amen.