Pokemon

   Just the words “Cancer Center” in big letters stuck to the side of the brick building made the hair on the back of my neck stand up. Why so big? They should whisper things like that, not shout them so loudly at people. We know, keep it down, we’re  all trying to keep our cool. Relax. I don’t know why I go to these things alone. That’s not true, I do know. I don’t want to ask anyone to come with me, “I shan't bother nary a soul” is my moniker. It does not serve me well. But there I was and in I went, clutching my bag with my wallet, phone and book, holding my coat closed tight around me. Frightened and annoyed by the unknown and the suggestion at the possibility that things in my body have gone wrong. Reluctantly following instructions to have this and that test done.
    Nothing is clearly marked, I go in the wrong office and am directed to the elevator that will lift me one floor and set me out into another office, like a slow bundled pinball.  At the window I dutifully say my name and that I am supposed to have an ultrasound of both breasts. The woman types on her keyboard and asks if I have my script. “Oh, I’m am sorry, I do not.” Of course I do not. I am lucky I am there at all and on time. I didn’t know I needed my script. Don’t all the doctors know each other? She asks if she can call my Dr. to get it. I say yes, of course and I am instructed to sit down and wait. I sit. There are two other women sitting together, we look at each other and then look away. I wonder if they are sick, which one is sick and if they think I am sick. I want to say, “I am not sick. I am just checking to be sure. I forgot my script….”
    The receptionist comes out of her box and informs me that my primary Dr. has not written a script for any ultrasounds. “Oh no,” I say, “It was from my OBG, I’m sorry. Can you call her?” She gives me a very tight lipped smile, sighs and turns quickly away. It is enough to make something snap in me. Just a small twig but that little twig was holding back a rush of panic, fear and grief. I don’t know these offices but I remember different Dr.s offices like this one when my mom was sick. She was the woman in the waiting room with a diagnosis, I was the young woman beside her. We were the two that sat quietly waiting, gentle with each other and cocooned in a protective haze of love and worry. I start to cry. I gather my coat and bag and walk to the bathroom, not daring to look at the women sitting side by side. Now they surely think I am very sick. I am not sick. I am not dying. I am not. You are.
    I stand in the bathroom and sob. I should have brought someone, I am embarrassing myself. I hope the receptionist has to wait for me, I hope she is confused and I hope she gets diarrhea. I turn on the faucets so no-one can hear me cry. I am afraid I will upset the other two waiting. Who may actually have something to cry about. I pull out my phone and text my husband. “The receptionist is so mean. She made me cry.” “Wtf?! Who is she?? I’m going to say something.” “I don’t know, she has short black hair. Forget it.” He assures me everything is okay. Back and forth we toss words at each other from miles away, with no sound. The faucet runs and I cry. I turn off my phone then turn it back on and look at it. I open my 10 year old’s Pokemon app. He loves this game and I’ve never played it but listen to him talk about it endlessly. He asks to play it wherever we go and sometimes I give in. On this little magic screen, I can now see standing in front of me in the bathroom is a big, round purple creature. He looks pissed. He is snorting like a bull and kicking at the dirt. I throw a poke ball at him and miss. I throw a couple more. Rolling and then releasing them, aiming for his purple belly. One finally catches him up inside then shakes and trembles and he pops out again. I stand there looking at this bull creature that I cannot catch. He snorts at me, madder than before. I have no more poke balls. How strange this life is, when I am alone and get tumbled around and then right myself by entering my son’s world where I can suddenly see the angry beast in the room where before it seemed to be just me. I had felt it and now I can see it. I shut the phone down and it is black and void again and slip it into my bag. I go back outside to wait for the receptionist to tell me and my pink splotchy, red eyed face what to do next.
    I do what she says stone faced and angry and then I am on my way. I go buy myself lunch at the health food store and treat myself to a green juice at the juice bar. A large. At Home Goods I walk around touching everything soft. I find a blanket that looks like furry whipped cotton balls, the color of a sunset right where the pink touches the blue. It is as soft and gentle as it can be. It doesn’t push back at all, it just sinks where I touch it. I buy it and bring it home. When I walk through the door my 10 year old’s jaw drops. “Who’s that for?” He asks. “It’s for me,” I say. “It’s a crying blanket. And you can use it any time you need to cry.” I told him about the purple beast in the bathroom at the Dr.s office and his eyes grow huge. He puts his hands out with his fingers spread wide and asks to see my phone. He says “It’s SO rare! I can’t believe you saw one!” And he does  not care that I didn’t catch it or that I used  up all his poke balls. He is just happy to hear about it and we look at the Pokemon app together to confirm which Pokemon it was. I am glad to be home safe and sound with no beasts in our house, and no mean receptionists.  I throw my cloud blanket in the wash and resume my busy life at home that keeps me afloat and aloft with it’s breezes and gusts of love and laundry.

Eating traditions.

 
   Christmas Eve my mother made the same lasagna every year. She would start the meat sauce in the morning and it would simmer on the stove all day, filling the house with it's aroma, warmth and promise of a delicious meal to come. Every time I make her lasagna, I think of her moving around our kitchen with care on a cold winter's day.
   On Christmas morning she made french toast and served it on a mismatched set of Christmas plates. Some of the plates were her grandmothers and some were hers from when she was little. On Christmas morning, I make french toast the way she taught me, with plenty of milk to make it moist, cinnamon and vanilla, and serve it on the same dishes. Placing the old Rudolf plate that my sister and I loved, in front of my little boy.
   For Christmas parties she made a lemon poppy seed cake and an upside down pineapple cake. I have not made them many times but I do think of them come Christmas and remember the taste of that sweet lemon filling layered with the speckled yellow lemon cake and the tiny soft crunch of the black poppy seeds. I would like to make this one again. Maybe this year.
   On Easter morning there was always an Easter basket outside my bedroom door when I woke. Little trinkets circling a chocolate bunny in the center. When I had grown old enough, I would leave her a basket outside her door too. And when she was gone, I would exchange baskets with boyfriends. Even my Jewish ones. Now I have two little boys to make Easter baskets for and I let my husband off the hook. We don't exchange baskets anymore.
   Thanksgivings at her brother's house, my Aunt would place one foil wrapped chocolate turkey on each plate. I thought they were so pretty and such a special thing. A dessert before dinner. Amazing. Any time I have made a Thanksgiving dinner at home, I have searched to find foil covered chocolate turkeys to put on each plate. I wonder if my mom brought a specific thing for Thanksgiving every year. If she did, I was not aware or can't remember now.
   My favorite baking traditions were for my birthday. Every year she made me a pink lemonade ice cream cake and moon cookies. The cake had a pale pink, frozen, lemonade whipped frosting, yellow cake and layer of pink lemonade ice cream in the center. Even when I went off to college, she made this cake and put in a cooler packed with ice and drove it from Long Island into the city to my dorm. I think she may have been a little superstitious about it.
   The moon cookies were crescent moon sugar cookies. When I was in elementary school, she would make vanilla cupcakes and dye vanilla frosting a light blue. Each cupcake would have a moon cookie and those pastel flower, almost star shaped sprinkles. When I was born I had a big round face and she said, "Ohhhh, you look like the moon...." and I looked back at her and made a little O with my mouth. And so she called me moon.
   I have made the cake a few times. I think I had made the cookies and then for a long time I could not as I had lost the recipe. Until an old and dear friend told me she had saved it for me just in case. And so I made them again. And there they were, like an old friend themselves, so happy to be reacquainted. This year another old and dear friend held out my mother's moon cookie cutter and said, "Is this yours?" I recognized it right away. I must have given it to her to hold or for some other reason. I can't remember. But had forgotten. I was so glad to see it.
   My birthday is in a few days. I am going to make the cake and maybe even some cookies. I have already made a home made organic lemonade concentrate. Imagine?
   I have been a little off kilter lately. In need of parenting. Wishing for supportive words, encouragement, guidance, a true and loyal fan. I find ways to parent myself. To take good care. I try to celebrate and encourage myself. And I find that keeping a tradition like baking a well loved and remembered cake on a birthday or preparing a meal from an old stained and familiar recipe card in my mom's handwriting is a peaceful respite.
   I was lying in bed this morning thinking about baking this cake and making the time and why it was important. How keeping traditions is like a bird flying a great distance and each repeated tradition is like the bird alighting in a tree to rest for a moment. Or a needle and thread moving into and out of fabric, keeping even stitches to hold a seam or create a pretty, even boarder. Each time we repeat a tradition, the needle touches the fabric and sends it's string through to hold time in place, to mark the days in an even pattern.
  I am the keeper of traditions in our house now. I guess most mothers are. Maybe because we feel the passage of time so deeply, watching our children grow and change before our eyes. Wanting to remind them to alight on this tree for a minute. Rest. Celebrate this life we have together. Acknowledge each other and the love we share every day through our comings and goings, moving from one thing to the next, day by day. Here. Here we are. It is a special day again. The earth has moved around the sun and we barely noticed. It says so right here on the calendar. This day has a flavor and a taste and color. And like little magnets, this cake, this dish, binds us with the day with pleasure, reminding us of all the days like it that came before.
  

Home Town Memorial

   Yesterday I went to a memorial service in my home town. The town on Long Island where I grew up and made my first friends. A place I miss and a place that feels like a dream when I return, parts of it so familiar and parts of it transformed and new, thinner in places and lusher in others. 

   Yesterday, I returned to be with one of my first friends. To stand watch like a knight on a chess board, to protect the air around her and see, hear and feel the day at her side. We were there for her mother's memorial.

   It felt important to be solid. I felt like I was willing my cells to hold tighter to each other, not to let any space move between them. Hold still and hold fast, do not melt, do not flit, or dissipate. Do not weep.

   Her family was so beautiful, wild and funny, and linked like golden chain. Each of them a gold loop bound to the other that wound around the room. Her mother's childhood friends were like a witches coven that sat in a tight circle of twelve after the service, their knees touching, taking notes, backs straight, listening to each other talk. They looked like they were planning a revolution, probably having more to do with literature and gardening.

   My mother died in the same town. In her own home. From cancer too. It was a long time ago. When she died, I drifted out into my life, my line cut, grasping at branches, searching for a path in a wood that seemed too overgrown and not the one I was prepared for. And I find myself now in what feels like a place very far from home. Like I have fallen through a portal into another time and space. But sometimes, the portal opens back up and I can step gently through for a little while and see where I came from and sometimes I am even met by friends who knew me then. Friends who knew me and somehow, magically, still do. Time travelers,  dream walkers, all of them.

   I have gone back to my childhood home, where I lived with my mother. It belongs to someone else now and everything in it has changed. The walls have moved. The colors, the light, the smells, the trees, all different. It seems smaller. And ruined. I cannot go home, after all. That home is gone.

   I stayed with my friend at the memorial and I waited. Wanting to be there as long as she needed me, as long as she'd let me be there to hold the space around her. Just to wait. To be and to wait. To be ready for anything or nothing. Whatever she needed.

   When most everyone had gone home, some of us went back with her to her childhood home, still her Father's place. The same one I had spent so much time in as a little girl and a young woman. It was as I remembered it. It was as I remembered it.... It is still there. Like a capsule, also like a dream, the same and different at the same time. It's an incredible thing to me.

   Her father walked past me with purpose, through the house, asking loudly, "What does everyone want?" We could have all been children at a sleepover. We had been a minute ago. And there stood my friend's younger sister with a menu from Gino's. The same place they ordered from when we were kids. 

  Her younger brother and sister are adults now but I could still see the little kids they were. Like looking at small children in adult costumes. Age progression holograms.

   We stood around the table, I beside my good and dear friend, listening to her talk. Pulling daisies out of a vase, splitting the stems, turning my fingernails green and lacing flower after flower together. I placed a daisy crown on her head. My beautiful friend, with her joy in place, her heart full and tender, sipping white wine, debating with her sister at her side, who was the favored child. The wine buoying her like a float in a pool. Glad she did not have to tread water, let her float. And I rest my arms on the side of her float and look up at her, my legs moving through the water. She tells me about me, like she's gazing into a crystal ball, finding me there.  She is love and she has always been there and vows to always be. I am lifted.

    She is so smart. She is strong and confident. She is whole and capable. And she loves me anyway. Before I go, she tells me, with tears in her eyes, how proud my mother would be of me. And it is all I can do to hold my cells together at all. Not to fall through the floor into the basement and disperse, soaked up by concrete, fizzling into it's pores. We sit on her mother's white couch, in her mother's beautiful living room, surrounded by books and her mother's beautiful things. Our Mother's daughters. Both of us now mothers of our own sons. Looking into each other's eyes, holding hands. I came to take care of her and she took care of me right back.

   There are few things as magical and valuable as old friends. People who can look at you and see you as you are and at the same time, see you as you were. All of the you in between.

   Mothers are this way. They see you wholly. And when that sight is gone, you can find it in an old friend's eyes and return it with a full heart. It is a treasure to hold onto. For as long as you can.

   When I left, she walked me to the door and leaned out into the night. I walked down her parent's front walk in the dark. "You're a good one," she called out to me. "So are you," I answered. And we are. We are good and our mother's would be proud.

Funerals and fires.

   Living across the street from a funeral parlor is a strange and interesting thing. It forces you to contemplate death maybe more often than you normally would. Most of the time it is just a big, old, beautiful gray house on the corner with a very manicured lawn. And then there are times when there are cars lining the street and you know there is a funeral going on. People in black walk in and out and to and from their cars. They stand in small groups outside and talk quietly. Sometimes they laugh, sometimes they smoke. And I always wonder who died. 
   I am never quite sure how to act when there is a funeral. Can I rake my leaves? Is it wrong to have Styrofoam tomb stones on the lawn on Halloween? Can my 6 year old play in the yard and make noise? Should I smile when I walk past a cluster of people dressed in black smoking cigarettes just outside the home? Or should I go the other way around the block and not walk past at all?  Should I unplug my Christmas lights? Is there a funeral parlor neighbor etiquette pamphlet somewhere that I could get a hold of?
   Once I saw a fight break out outside the house. Sometimes there are bagpipes and sometimes gun salutes and men in uniforms.  And my little boy and I are lured outside to watch discretely, standing still, with concerned faces, on our lawn. 
   Today they are holding the funeral for a 19 year old Captain of his volunteer fire department. They have the road closed off, no parking signs have been staked in the ground all day, flood lights, and a fire truck with it's ladder extended, waving a huge American flag outside of the funeral home.There have been a hundred or so firemen in black uniforms standing outside for hours. First in a line, then in some kind of formation, then a crowd, then a line again. Every time I look out the window, they seem to be doing something else. I can't tell if it is the same crowd or a new one. They seem to be arriving in large groups, in buses. Where are they coming from? 
   For a few hours this afternoon and again hours this evening, the line and flow of people going in and out of the funeral home has been long and steady. I wonder if his parents are inside. I wonder if they have to receive all of these people and if this is all comforting to them or just exhausting. 
   I heard he died fighting a fire in a basement when his mask came off and no-one is sure how it happened.  I think his name was Jack Rose. 
   There are electric signs coming in and out of town to expect delays tomorrow because of his service. Every time I see a sign or see the flood lights out the window, I think, nineteen.... only nineteen. 
   I was watching Joseph standing outside tonight next to Desmond, our 6 year old boy and holding Sonny, our 3 month old boy, and thinking about Jack Rose's parents. Losing a child is more than I think I could bear. I feel like I've done my time with grief in this life, losing my mother so young, but I'm sure I will have plenty more grieving to do. Few of us escape loss and grief. How very painful it is. 
   As I walked Desmond up to bed tonight, watching his small, shirtless back and his overgrown blond head of hair, climb the stairs in front of me, I wanted to tell him he was not allowed to become a fireman. Just you know, get a desk job. But I didn't say anything. I just ran my finger over his freckle on his smooth shoulder blade. My little boy. I do hope he grows to be an old man. That he gets to fall in love, maybe to marry and to have his own children if he wants them. To have adventures, to get gray hair and wrinkles. I hope I get to be around for a lot of it. 
   And my little baby boy. My fat, luscious, smiling, drooling, baby boy with his wispy hair and chubby fists. Please grow. Thrive and be well and safe. I am so nervous something will happen to him. Just live, please live. Past nineteen. Oh God, please oh please. 
   I can't think about it.
   But the line outside. The enormous flag waving in the flood lights. Forces me to think. Nineteen. 
   Also, I wonder how many people have the lyrics, "Captain Jack will get you high tonight...." floating through their minds. It drifts into my mind like music in a scary movie. The tune playing tinny like a music box. 
   It's 9:45 and they are just lowering the ladder on their truck. The engine is running and I can hear it from inside. I suppose they will be back tomorrow. We should expect delays. I have no-where to go. I plan on being home with my two boys, safe and sound. And reveling in their company, for all that it's worth. 
  

32 weeks pregnant.

   Not for nothin, but things are really happening over here. A new person is using my body to make it's own. Super sci-fi, super ordinary and extraordinary at the same time. Happens all the time. It's  the second time it's happened to me. I wasn't sure there'd be a second time. The first time left me speechless.
   For some, it's nothing but miraculous and delightful and wonder filled. That's lovely. But it's not so for everyone. I checked. Lots of women have a hard time being pregnant. There's so much going on in your body when someone else's body starts to grow inside of yours. Physical things, hormonal things, emotional and mental things, spiritual things, all the things. Ultimately it is grand, when it's over and you get your baby, your new person to love and to raise. I know this now because like I said, I've done this once before. But before you get to that baby part, there's a whole lot of mysterious, mystical, radical, confounding things happening to you.
   My belly has stretched to hold my new person. Like someone has attached a tire pump to my belly button and has filled me with too much air. My body feels heavy, like I am wearing soaking wet clothes, extra pounds to carry.  When I move, things pull and when I am still, things push. My breath leaves me and I have to stop to catch it, like I have been running after a cab, flailing my arms wildly, stopping to catch my breath, still trying to waive it down. Come back, breath. Even though I have not been running, maybe I just carried a pair of shoes upstairs, or maybe I just walked from the dining room into the kitchen.
   I am itchy. My breasts and belly are itchy, the varicose veins that have sprouted all along the back of my left leg like the trail left by a manic slug, itch and are hot to the touch. They ache and pulse and I place a hand on them to sooth them. I have a compression stocking to wear too, when I have enough breath and flexibility to put it on. I have two small spots of poison ivy that I shouldn't scratch, not pregnancy related, but there they are. I should not mention the hemorrhoids.
   I cannot see what is below my waist. I cannot reach the kitchen faucet unless I turn sideways and stretch over. I cannot lean close to the bathroom mirror to see my face, I can only look from a distance. I cannot sit on the floor for long, or bend over easily. Getting dressed is difficult, balancing and getting my feet into my shorts, so uncomfortable to stand this way. My hips ache and my back is unhappy with me.
   When I sit, I feel a great upward and downward pressure, compacting what, I don't know. When I lie down, there is pulling and then there is movement from inside, adjusting, shuddering, rolling, pushing with hands and feet, head and rump. Sometimes I gasp and have to push back, afraid something will break free, will tear, will fall apart if I don't hold down the rising tide of baby that swells so suddenly.
    I am tired, slowed down to meander through my days, stopping to sit, stopping to breathe, stopping to close my eyes, stopping to look for a moment at something I can't do that I'd like to.
    I am self conscious. When I go out to run errands, cashiers ask me when I am due. They think I am due in a couple of weeks, but I am due in a couple of months. Their eyes grow wide and they say, "You must be having twins!" This adds to my anxiety, wondering how much bigger and uncomfortable I will become, how much less I will be able to do, how much more difficult it will become to navigate my body around my days and nights. And I feel shamed. I am "too big", my  belly is "too fat" for how pregnant I am. And it is so obvious and it is so shameful, that it is acceptable for a stranger to tell me they think so.
    And I am lucky. Of course I am. I am blessed. This is my second baby. I am 40 years old. I needed no fertility treatments, no shots, no drugs, no big expense. It took only a few months of trying, not even feeling 100% sure that I should have another baby, to do it all again, for me to get pregnant.
   Some women want desperately to get pregnant and can't. Some women get pregnant and don't want to be. And some try even though they are not exactly sure they want to be and then they are. Along with so many other jumping off places in between. There is no perfect formula or moment or way to get pregnant. It happens. Or it doesn't.
   I am grateful. I am amazed. I am in awe. I am excited. I am pregnant. I already love the little boy that is growing inside of me. More than I had the first time I was pregnant, I understand who this baby will be to me. Even though I haven't met him yet, now I know how it feels to care for a baby, to watch him grow, see him smile and laugh, crawl, walk, talk, and turn into the little alien full of questions about Earth, guiding him through everything, loving him, and him loving me back.
   All of the good, the very, very big goodness of it, the miraculous being, growing, becoming, bringing forth into the worldness of it, does not make it simple. Or easy. Or comfortable. And for me, that is real. That is my experience. This is wonderful and it is uncomfortable. One does not negate the other. Both things exist.
   The discomfort and the great and demanding physical changing that leaves me feeling awkward in the way I move around, the way I feel about myself, the way people react to me, is a lonely thing. A baby adds to a family, to a community, to the world. This baby is my husband's son, my son's brother. He'll be a grandson and a nephew and loved by lots of people. But the experience of carrying him as he grows and becomes able to enter the world, is mine. If something happens to him and he does not make it, he would still be mine to birth. He is every one's baby but this part of his life, is so entwined with mine, he and I journey along together. He is silent and invisible. I am more visible than ever.
   I wish I had pregnant friends. Remembering pregnancy is quite different than being pregnant. Every pregnancy is different. This pregnancy is different from my first. Although my memories of being pregnant are fuzzy now. I remember being surprised by how much work it was, physically. How demanding it felt and how it sort of took over. If I had pregnant friends, we could talk easily about how it feels, all of the truth of it, without the guilt or worry. I stay up late reading pregnancy forums to make sure I am not crazy. To read what other women have written about the same symptoms I have. The same frustrations and fears. Every time I go out and someone comments on me being too big, I come home and do a Google image search of whatever number of weeks pregnant I am, to be sure I am not a freak of nature. I think I look the right size, but it is hard for me to know what I look like.
   With the heaviness of the extra physical weight I am carrying, I have been carrying an emotional weight lately. Feeling uncomfortable and wanting to talk about it and being met with criticism, is painful.
   I am just a human. I am having a human experience, a pretty common one at that. I am not perfect. I am not trying to be. I am certainly not looking to offend anyone by talking about my discomfort. Admitting to being uncomfortable while pregnant does not mean I am not also grateful.
   I think, when we are in pain, it is helpful to share it with the people in our lives who care about us and to feel supported. Empathy is a beautiful thing. Being real and vulnerable has brought me a lot of strength and healing in my life. The quieter I am with my sorrows, the bigger they become.
   I am scared. I am scared that I will get too big to leave the house. I am scared that I will get too big to get out of bed at night to pee. I am scared that I will be in increasing amounts of pain for the next 8 weeks.  I want to spin a cocoon and hide until the baby is born. Come back out when I can move again. When I can reach my toes and run around the block.
   And  I am sad. I am sad that I am being critiqued and judged while I am struggling.
   Maybe this is a pathetic post. Let us keep in mind, I am full of extra hormones, and that my brain is not working as well as it does when I am singular in my body and also there does not seem to be enough oxygen in my blood.
   I'll cast this out there. Because maybe, someone reading this is pregnant and uncomfortable. Or maybe you have a friend who is. And if you do have a friend who is, might I recommend you tell your friend that they look wonderful, that they are doing a great job, that it IS a lot of work and ask them how they feel and listen to what they have to say and have empathy for them. And maybe buy them some organic fruit.

Buckle up.

   I am like a kangaroo sloth. Hiding a tiny baby marsupial the size of an olive. Moving so slowly. Like I am covered in heavy, wet, draped wool. I can't catch my breath, even though I have barely moved. Everything is still. In some other dimension, another me is running up a hill, all day. And I feel her energy slipping constantly, I have to sit down, I am winded. Then she is dancing with a partner I can't see. It takes my breath away, I am dizzy, I am queasy, the dance must be too fast. And all I can do is lie down and close my eyes. Or read someone else's story, to distract me from the dancing. She and I are linked together with spider web thin, invisible strings, bridging our lives. She is wildly moving, determined and powerful. While I am linked to her, my body does not belong to me. It belongs to something else. It's slipped into the big pool. The collective. The everything.  It will live there for a while. Until this tiny body growing inside of mine has gotten all it needs from me. Then this new person and I will give each other a little bow and the tags come off. Then my body will be exclusively mine again and I can wrap my bat wings tightly around myself and exhale deeply. Mine, mine, mine. And hang upside down just for a few minutes.
   For now, I am strapped into a ride. The things I feel have little to do with what I am doing. The mystery is whole and complete. The ride has begun. I cannot get off mid-ride. I will have to wait, for a long while. I do not know what is in store.
   At first I panicked. I fumbled at the seat belt, wondering how it had gotten fastened so tight, so quickly. I had been standing in line for so long, not quite sure I wanted to go on the ride at all. Suddenly, there I was and I could feel the car jerk forward and start to move slowly on it's track, click, click, click. This is it. I am on. I am not getting off. Maybe I can still do what I was doing before I got on this ride. I can try. I tried. I couldn't. I settled into the ride. My elbow found a spot to rest on the side of the car, my face rested in my hand, I looked around. Not much to see.
   The ride is jerky and slow. So slow. You would think it was just me on the ride. A one woman car. But it is not. It is me and the whole world. It is me with everything. It is me in the everything. My me-ness is insignificant. I belong to something else. The ride has taken me. Whisked me away, snatched me up, grabbed me with a hook from the side of the stage and pulled me off scene. Then plopped me into the slow car. The sloth mobile of sharing. To ride and ride.
   When it is done... let us not think of the end of the ride. Out beyond the end, there is a chance, there is the possibility of amazing and happy things. Someone waits for me there. Someone who has been waiting a long while for their own ride to begin. A ride they desperately wanted to get on. THE ride. The one we all wanted to get on.  One I would not trade for anything. One I wish would go on forever.
   I guess, to give someone that chance, is worth whatever I have to do to get them there. To get them here. To bring that wishing, wanting, someone home. Where they want to be. And when they get here, I will be glad. And I will say, "Put your arms up when we go down the big hills. It's more fun that way."

Winter's nose.

   Winter's so nosy. Sticking it's nose into every last thing. It slips in your doors without asking, peeks through your windows, finds the smallest seam, and welcomes itself into your room. It wants to see what you smell like, what your toes are up to.
   Look out the window, all you see is Winter. Even the wooden fence looks cold. Every little thing braces itself, contracted and still, tolerating Winter's scrutiny.
   Oblivious to the wake it leaves where it wanders. Someone at a party who is talking too loud, tossing inappropriate stories around the room, like little ice grenades. The rest of us glance at each other and shiver through our layers of silk, wool, fleece and fur.
   We become like animals hiding in our dens, waiting. Stretching out a pale, bare hand to see, how cold it is. It is still very cold. We tuck our hands back under the blankets, pull them up to our chins, burrow deeper in. What month is this? What month comes next? The next month is cold too. Surely, not as cold as this one. I think this is the coldest. Then what month follows... Oh it could be spring. Maybe Spring will come when it used to, at Easter. I will eat the forsythia when it blooms. In hopes that the soft yellow bloom will replenish something I lost. Something Winter borrowed without asking, took for itself, used up and left somewhere else. I don't know exactly what it is but I can feel it's absence. I check my pockets, pat myself down, pat the table, it was here a minute ago. Distracted by the cold fingers running through my hair. I swat them away. What was I looking for? Maybe a hat. Where is my hat? I turn the thermostat up two degrees.
   My radiators keep up a steady, sweaty river dance in the corners. Tapping, clanking, hissing and snapping. A little hot rivulet of water runs up and out through a steaming metal anchor in the floor.  It puddles on the floor. Surprised by it's warmth as I wipe it up with a towel. Like blood from a fresh wound. You cannot fight winter, stay in the pipes where you belong. It will be over, eventually. We just have to wait. Move your attention to the sunlight. Look. Look here. 
   The sun is like a mother's hand, smoothing your brow. You're okay, she says. She smiles. I am here. It's only winter. I can still hear some birds song, can you? She pokes her fingers through the crystals in the window and rainbows scatter around the room.
  Inside, color reigns. Flowers stand tall on the table. Brightly patterned fabric, pillowed couch, blankets, piles of toys. We'll wait it out. Classical music plays, a sweet smell of banana pancakes hangs in the air for a few moments longer. We wade through the cold air on the floor. Where are my slippers? What else can we cook? We can leave the oven on and huddle in front of it. What's for lunch, Winter asks? I don't remember inviting you, Winter. Why don't you go into town and pick something up? We'll wait here.