Dragons

For my daughter, on her third birthday

You were born on a Saturday afternoon.  You mostly let me finish my breakfast, and we settled in after dinner, together, except this time in my arms.  We’ve both grown.  My short hair is long, I’ve got some wrinkles, and you are no longer my Colorado ‘baby’.  You are becoming.  Feisty, wild, and sweet, lover of unicorns and this moment, your presence is incredible, your timing, ridiculously serendipitous. 

I was not ready for you, but you moved with me.  I remember my belly in Tunnels, swimming through blue soon to be seen in the color of your eyes.  You were the indecision that held my hand, the unexpected life that birthed my own voice: my ‘never again’, ‘not anymore’, and ‘this is no longer how it will be’.  Your heartbeat gave fierceness to mine.  Fingers and toes and doubled blood count nurtured our reach for a place that was safe and good and true.  Your delight and joy are precious to me as one who was an intimate witness to the hard work of healing I began before, and have continued since, your arrival.

There has been a lot going on in this way of change and it’s hard to see you be resilient so young.  I want more for you.  I want different.  But I know the only way forward is through.  You do too, just like your book “We’re going on a Bear Hunt.”

This place we live, desert, altitude, and mountains all require more to inhabit.  You choose to widen; your world is much—albeit often inconvenient to basically everything else happening at the time.  And such is the necessary work of one’s young heart.

Sometimes I feel worried, what does showing up in my story mean for you and your siblings?  Am I just taking with time and expense and emotional weariness resources you all need?  What’s it worth?  And if it’s not, what am I to do with the fact that there’s not another way round—at least that I can, or believe should be, taken?

So when you threw one of your magnificent, unstoppable, glass shattering, affects and then calmed yourself down: you answered.

“My fire dragon.”  You called her.  And then you began to tell me more, about you, about her and what she needed, and her other names, and how she makes you feel, and all the ways you understand all the things she and you both have to say.

As you went on, the audience of your parents’ captive, describing your soul in freedom, beauty, and detail, I glanced at your father and we wept.  For all the ways I’ve labored in secret for so long, to tend to wounds recent and ancient, here was the result.  You have no fear, or shame, or reservation in knowing the wonder of your own heart.  It’s no surprise you love to reflect your inner workings through things fantastic and magical because you are fearless to the depths of your being.  You belong to you.

And, I suppose, because I just so happen to get to be the one who walks through with you for these next few years, that, if you are fire and dragons, I am a mother of them too.

Orientation

“As the nighttime bleeds into the day
tomorrow spills across the sky
And the sun’s a harsh reminder why
we are feeling barely human.”                                           Grip- Seeb & Bastille

Welcome to the desert.

There’s the obvious: yes, water and food are difficult to come by.  Lots of normal things won’t work: WiFi—pens, meditation, seatbelts, the oven, in fact save yourself the energy of being surprised.

Sunsets and rises you’ll be fine, even happy— alone, midday heat, midnight cold you’ll manage.  It’s late afternoon and the end of third watch when you need someone.  Pay attention to who you meet.

I won’t romanticize it, but well, you’ll see.  Sure, find the beauty etc. etc., soon enough that will let you know who the newcomers are—if you run across anyone.  Best to just listen and wait. 

You’ll know the one.  And remember don’t be afraid.  As an exile yourself, any enemies you make are your choice here on out.  It’s one way to survive, I suppose.  You see the ones delirious with mirage and always clamoring about the oasis?  Making somewhere else to be leads to making someone else to blame and if that’s your thing, you’ll find plenty of company.

Anyways, about the cold dark morning.  Your first encounter will be mistaken for singularity, everyone does it.  You’ll think if you work now you’ll never have to do this again, that you’ve found the way out.  So, when it happens next, best begin a playful tally of dark-before-dawn days you wish you’d never known.  Moon and Sun and Time bring no judgments to the world’s turning.  It helps to remember this when you swing your feet to the floor.

But, when tempted with gravity to collapse on the ground—consider the birds, little babblers.  Watch them dance in the dust those mornings.  Their eggs are the blue of shallow water if you’re parched for color.  You’ll be jealous, watching community ease survival, but notice—they depend on two.  One stands watch high in the branches, open to sky and prey, a decoy or herald of danger, and the other, their mate (the group’s only couple) shares the tasks to protect and defend the little flock.

Your only task is here.  Learn the dance between surface and depth every mourning, make oxygen holy communion.  I know, the loss of faith and hope and joy, perhaps love too are more than one is able to bear.  Go ahead and say it, ‘peace, peace, there is none.’  You are alone.  Only you are welcome here.  Only you are here.  Only you can welcome here.

If you’ve watched the birds though, you’ll soon notice the companions.  One’s presence heavy like a winter coat in a storm, cherished and bundled up with nothing, soothing like a shot of whiskey in the chest, drifting to the limbs.  They’ll make days a trance and the night so welcome, creating a shelter of sorts.  This caretaker is one who is not waiting for anything because whatever happened already arrived.  Rest with them supporting your feet on the cold morning floor, watch how tenderly they gather the scattered remains of prayers you need not lift anymore.  Some people think the name’s acceptance—to soften truth, but it’s not.  This is despair.  You’d rather it was someone else, I know.  You may think you need hope instead, but you are weary and hope is permanent disruption, despair is the beloved’s scar and you’re going to need both to get anywhere.

Rest awhile.

When you’re ready… Hope is standing in the flame of desire you are finally able to allow presence.  Despair is bowing to the weight of sorrow you are finally willing to bring presence.  These two are lovers, like the birds, and together they guard exiles in movement and rest.

This is the desert, hot and cold, faith, doubt, joy, grief, hope and despair, all together waiting as love moves peace through polarity.  Welcome the desert.

Welcome Advent.

“This is already bigger than love.”                                              Bigger than love- Oh Wonder 

Breckenridge

We bend time and escape every Autumn, chasing the leaves.  The first year was too late, aspens already wintered, but we’ve learned to listen.  Our mountains call a little bit earlier, rewarding more color each season.  Colorado is a show off.

I had forgotten the calm of setting your feet on trail.  I move fast here.  I breathe deep.  No dust or sound, only wind and exhale.

Add in kids though and I move slowly, searching.  Who needs handholding or has run ahead only to cry ‘I’m tired’?

We chose a hike above tree line, the route more off-road than footpath.  Half a dozen water bottles, cheese sticks, and apples, four children, my camera and too many jackets.  Gentle breeze became gusts and I gripped my pair of little hands tightly—feeling they could blow away.  With cold ears and not much laughter, everyone kept going and we made it back in two hours.  That’s a 40 minute mph pace.

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I question myself as a mother often, still healing wounds of broken attachment.  Failure I can smell a mile away, but what’s normal is not something I’ve got a nose to bless.  It’s actually more painful; because when I do take that breath, those healed scars resonate in what’s good and beautiful.

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My partner loves to remind me, with such moments, that each individual in my care embodies wholeness where there was loss.  They follow in no specific order: power, desire, drama, and yes, snark. 

It’s a deep trail-breath remembering this.

So when the smallest of all roared that she would carry the backpack of four, I listened, waited, and witnessed a feisty toddler reach twelve thousand feet in her own tiny steps.
Determination and delight alive on her face, a strong and deep knowing, isn’t it good?

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This is the way I love to discover my family, just as it is.  Because all good writers, I’ve learned, simply tell the truth with the life they’ve been given.

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For context, a lousy mattress at the Airbnb left us sleep deprived and our craving for brick oven pizza with craft beer post-hike remained unsatisfied when tempers and appetites would walk no further.  Things were disappointing, but it wasn’t that this didn’t matter, it’s that we know loss and hope and broken hearts (no sleep or pizza can be real struggles) are children too.  They hike alongside us with plans of their own and we’re there with a listening ear, if need be. 

This is us, our mountains, the present, and my people.  I think the trees keep color like candles.  They know it is our time of endings and beginnings.

Three years here in Colorado and look at my boy smiling, those tiny rascals holding hands, this confident girl.  Unstaged, real, accepted.

Happy birthday to a life, house, and hearts we freaking literally rebuilt.

I call it, ‘the beautiful’.

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