hunger.

i’m hungry. a lot. and i wonder if people around me are as hungry as i am. for meaning, and movement, and that occasional (and most times fleeting) feeling of grace and comfort that envelops, soothes, and whispers in our ear that things are as they should be, where they should be, that the rhythm of the universe is intact.

i walked my sweet dog lucy through our still new neighborhood a week or two ago, before daylight savings time had kicked in. it was dusk, just getting dark, and in most of the houses i passed, the blue light of tv was flickering on walls and there were smells of dinner coming through open windows. people were at the end of their work days, settling in, relaxing. a few families were outside talking while their kids ran around playing. and as much as i was at my end-of-day, and winding down some, i wasn’t really in my end of day, the place where you get to let the work drop until you pick it up again the next morning.

my work life is not simple. the past ten years have been prolific not only in visual work and written work, but in ideas sitting in files, sitting in file cabinets, sitting in my house. some of that has come with being a mommy, but the truth is i haven’t let go of the battle between what i have to do and what i want to do, and the result is hours in both. it isn’t my type-a personality or my tendencies toward workaholism: i am too exhausted for either of those anymore. and i don’t believe it is some cloud-wrapped, lofty idea of what should be, must be, or will be. the journey of a creative soul is not an easy one; there are many like-minded and creatively driven people in my life that have made the concessions necessary to pay the rent, the mortgage, the bills. enough of them to know the creative journey doesn’t necessarily end up as the happily-ever after we hope for in art school.

but it is there still, the path, the choice, the journey. what drives it, that thing that keeps us going, when we’re tired, or out of ideas, or blind-sided by the stress of the unorthodox paycheck? i have learned to understand it as just a part of who i am, the side of me that strives to see meaning and poetry and authenticity in this life, that makes the twenty hour days that are not about the forty-hour work week paycheck a manageable decision. worthwhile. wrapped in the golden thread that exists between our younger ideas and our somewhat more seasoned knowledge. golden because the mix of the two is such a beautiful thing to understand and experience.

i recently met a person in whom there was, for me, an immediate feeling of kindred-ness, the kind that comes the moment you slam in to someone and realize you get to be an audience and have an audience and you want both. not for the narcissistic need we all have to feel important, but for the deeper, soul-nourishing connection there is when you meet someone on a similar path, with a similar heart, who sees you and who you know feels seen, just by the tone in their voice, the earnestness of shared conversation.

suddenly, i was starving. ravenously. as though i’d been eating something like, grape-nuts, for months, but had just come face to face with a plate of my favorite pasta drenched in olive oil, fresh tomatoes, and parmesan cheese. with a gorgeous bottle of chianti. and mixed greens with goat cheese. fresh bread, and maybe some chocolate in there somewhere too. i had my appetite back, and with it came curiosity, and gratitude, and the most tender appreciation for human connection. i’ve been working so hard, and so singularly, for so long now, i have forgotten what it feels like to have a big appetite, and to satisfy it. the path to realizing our work, it’s meaning, where it exists in our life, is immeasurably important, but it can be a chaste one. it’s easy to forget to feed one’s soul.

tonight i said goodbye to my new friend. time and circumstances don’t allow for a friendship, and my heartache around that is surprisingly painful. it’s like i have to put the plate of pasta at the very back of the fridge and pretend i didn’t have a bite or two. but i know it is there, and i can look at it every once in a while to be reminded of how great things taste when you are really hungry. i hope in the back of his fridge my friend has a plate of pasta, or something exquisitely delicious, and gets to be reminded, too.

words from a new place

i haven’t been here in so long. i haven’t missed it until just now. the just now because i left my good friend’s blog just now and was transported, through her writing, so immediately to what the past three months have been for her that i felt my knees buckling and my heart tighten. this journey, this big one that is living and surviving and celebrating our one life, damn. the bitter and the sweet – the wrap up of both – can flip your heart around for the sheer ache of it all. it is that for me, and it is that in moments for those whom i love. all i know to do is continue to tell the truth, to trust, to keep kissing on everyone. life gets hard, and suddenly, i want to kiss and write. sadly it will have to be the latter for now.

maya told me tonight that she wanted to skip the early grades (this from a first grader) and move on to what comes later so she can skip all the homework she’ll have to do between now and then. i told her of course that was impossible – that she would feel horribly overwhelmed by homework if she left what is Here to jump to There. but really, what i wanted to say was “me too! i want to skip all of this hard work and just arrive, at some big playground or ballroom of a place that feels grand and better and easier than this.” because really, on top of the necessary tasks – the making of money, the making of meals, cleaning the sweet, cozy house, washing grass stains and paint out of school uniforms, walking the dog, grinding perfect coffee to make the new day manageable, applying eyeliner, watering the yard – outside of the thousands of little things we all do (not to mention what we feel) is still, at least in my world, homework.

which brings me away from my beautiful friend’s july, august & september, and back to my own. first though let me say to that beautiful friend how much i miss her and honor her and how graciously she is walking upon an incredibly hard path. were i so strong.

okay so, moi encore. some of you know i recently moved to a new-old house. i was asked in june to leave my beautiful old apartment by the sea (at that moment began the homework), and as devastated as i was, once that passed (about twenty minutes later, weird.), i knew the move would be life-changing. time to let go, of everything that was, so i could see everything that may be. did i say that was june? good god, how did i survive it? maya was out of school and barely in summer camp. i had just picked up a second job, the heat was coming – ugh – and i had a house to find and five trillion pounds of stuff to pack and move. homework is hard.

i won’t bore you with the details, as they are excruciating and this was by far the most heinous move i’ve ever made. but i did it. i looked and looked for a perfect place – not sure i would find one given the lovelier-than-lovely space i was leaving – and on a weekday afternoon with my mom and my sissy and my kiddo in the car, we bought jumbo iced lattes and spent hours looking for the house that would be the right fit. and at the almost-end of that day, we found it. or it found me. either way, the packing and purging began, and though family and friends helped to clean, and pack, and move, the bulk of what took place was my work. my homework.

i did so much of it alone, moving things in during off hours and packing while maya was asleep. and the deeper work too, it was mine alone; it felt solitary, and i felt singular within it, and empowered. saying goodbye to a house i was connected to in so many different ways for thirteen years was painful. seven of those years i lived there. my Estranged Husband and i courted there. later, from the house we bought, we drove there to pick up ten-week old puppy lucybean from my sister and her soon-to-be husband. we sold our house and moved back there when i was nursing five-month old maya. i lost my marriage there, spent countless nights sleepless and buried in sadness. and finally, i recovered there. went back to work, started to write, cooked for maya and i in the kitchen and got back to a normal weight. entertained friends and became peaceful and did a few outlandish things. i loved that house with so much of my heart and soul; it became wonderful to reflect on its place in my life, soak in its beauty, and say goodbye.

and now i am here. did i find the perfect place that would soothe my soul and my spirit as i let more of what has been, go? i did. a whole house, for me and my girl and our dog. we lost kitty cat boomer days after moving in; she had been sick, was getting better, but the move took away her appetite and her body couldn’t seem to recover a second time. boomer died in my arms on our second monday morning here, and it was beautiful and crushing to be in her last hours with her. thank god maya was with her papa, and that boomer was with me: she laid on my chest for most of the morning, and seemed peaceful and without pain before we said goodbye. we honored her by burying her in our new yard, and planted an asparagus fern from the old house smack dab on top of her to celebrate her perfect kitty-ness and eleven-year life. the plant won’t stop growing, and every day on the way out we say good morning boomer!, just like we did when she was with us.

Outside is a canopy of trees that shades from the sidewalk to the front door. A secluded porch houses my old green bench – the one people fight to sit in at parties -  and everywhere are beautiful old plants that i imagine have been here for ages: crepe myrtle trees, gardenias and roses, fragrant jasmine. Inside are windows (so many windows), and built-ins, and a big kitchen in the exact middle of the house, where kitchens should be, as they are the heart of the home. the living room is light-filled, big and long; long enough for two couches and my old blueprint filing cabinet as an art space for maya. the bathroom feels like a train car, the bedrooms are perfect squares (how i love perfectly square rooms), and there are three of them, which means i have a work space again where i get to paint. something i haven’t found time or space for since maya was born. i get to paint. the only thing next to yoga and writing and yes, kissing, that feels like being in the center of myself and utterly lost all at the same time.

but the best part of our new home is the circle within it. you can go from the living room to the kitchen to my studio, make a right through the bizarre train-car doors of the bathroom, move past one bedroom and through another, and end up right back in the living room again. maya and i have chased each other in our pajamas more than once through the house in the past two months, and it is a perfect circle, one of the few times you can see the beginning as you are nearing the end. could there be a more fitting metaphor? does it matter that the irony is ridiculously obvious? i think no, probably not. i am just grateful to be here, seeing the end, at the same time i am seeing the beginning, of what is turning out to be a strangely perfect circle.

inter/face(book)

i am swamped. two jobs. a kidlet on summer vacation. looking for a new house. not to mention the pile(s) of things i want to do but can’t find time to do, like, um, my work as a painter, the three children’s books i have yet to send out, the furniture that needs refinishing, the yoga classes i am not attending. the list goes on and on. oh, and did i mention that i have a business? oh yes, that.

plus that other mentionable, fortydeluxe, The Blog. there is so much going on i can’t seem to articulate any of it. maybe when the new dust settles, i will have some minutes to figure out what All Of This That Is Happening is about. but for now i am simply hanging on with my two full hands to this ride that is, so far, summer 2009.

So in lieu of any new marvels or fabulous insights, i am stealing a page from the (face)book, and posting a list of factoids two friends demanded i do. for those of you who have seen it, sorry for the redundancy. for those of you who haven’t, try not to fall asleep.

1. i have avoided doing this task since chere ruthie en rouen sent it to me last fall. the only reason i am doing it now is because danny said i have to. but i still think this exercise in narcissism is so very moi moi moi blah blah blah. that being said,

2. my favorite smells are coffee brewing in the morning, fresh lavender, early grey tea steeping, and the nape of maya’s neck. for that matter, the nape of anyone’s neck whom i love.

3. my second language is dutch.

4. i am a very good mom. i tell maya that all the time. mostly she laughs that water-over-pebbles laugh, but sometimes she glares at me and says ‘well i am a very good kid’. right now that isn’t really true, but i love her with my deepest heart and soul.

5. if money were no object, and i therefore had unlimited time and resource, i would open a city-block-big shelter for dogs to be rescued and rehabilitated. and i would smooch repeatedly on the heads of each and every one of them.

6. if i could have dinner and a bottle of wine with anyone, it would be ee cummings. his poetry pulls the breath out of my body and then blows it back in, with sparkles.

7. a moment of decadence for me involves my couch, the perfect book, and french press coffee + hot milk. if chocolate needs to be involved that is okay, too.

8. i hold more women in high regard than i do men. the loveliest thing about that is that these are the women in my life. that being said, i would very much liked to have been friends with imogen cunningham and audrey hepburn.

9. i think i am very horsey. i begged my parents when i was in eighth grade to let me go to a private high school so i could have horse-back riding for phys ed. they said no, so i lived in holland for a year instead. i didn’t get to ride any horses there either.

10. i have an affinity for many things ‘c’. chairs, cups, and coats. my friend stephen and i had an epiphany several years ago on a long distance call that these things involve wrapping, much like the shape of the letter c itself. we wrap our hands around cups; we sit in a chair and it embraces us, we pull coats around our bodies to warm us. our second epiphany that day was that this probably wouldn’t make sense to anyone but us.

11. back to the horse thing. my fantasy life is that of a cowgirl. on a ranch.

12. more fantasy: if i could live any contemporary novel, it would be the time traveler’s wife. if i were terribly brave, i would sing back up in a band.

13. the person who makes me feel safest in the world is my sister loreen.

14. i move through this world trying to see everyone. the person bagging my groceries, the old man crossing the street in front of my car, the nanny taking care of someone else’s kids. every single positive action that every single person does is beautiful and significant. i love that waiters in france have deep pride in their work.

15. i overheard my grandpa in iowa tell my father when i was ten years old that i was beautiful, and it changed my life. this after getting notes in my desk in fourth grade that said ALBINO! at a time when marsha brady was the It Girl.

16. one of the sweetest things is when someone comes to my house and a) is comfortable enough to dig around in my fridge and b) doesn’t want to leave.

17. i rearrange my furniture constantly. the best time is on saturdays when there is still some coffee in the pot and an old movie on tv. once i do it – and it can take hours of critical thinking and measuring in this little house – everything feels fresh and cozy. i love cozy.

18. i have three websites and a blog site. and i dare to despise narcissism! how ridiculous of me. but really it has more to do with being a type-a workaholic.

19. i think one of the loveliest parts of a woman’s body is the ankle, and the most beautiful part of a man is where the forearm meets the wrist. that and his sense of humor.

20. i have a thing for vintage jewelry and old cars. i’ve had a little bit of both.

21. i get lost when i paint, when i write, and when i dig around and garden in the yard. there is something about using my hands, especially when in soil, that takes me to a quiet, beautifully absent place. it’s meditative, church-like.

22. i am not drawn to money as a means of status. people and their trophies bore me. i am unbearably drawn to people with money who do something good and kind and humane with their resources. benevolence is sexy.

23. i like small houses. would never want a big one. i believe big spaces belong in nature.

24. if i could do one thing besides speak fluent italian, it would be to play the violin. i really, really want to fiddle like they do in the irish bands.

25. most of you definitely know this one, but it is worth repeating. i am a really good dancer.

the company we keep

i have lost friends this year. actually, for the last few years, they have been moving out of my life in rapid succession. there is lisa, now in maryland; sophia, in san diego; tracy, on her way back from two years in austria, but to colorado, not california. more recently, june and her boys abandoned us for mexico and then, fittingly, northern california. my mainstay and pillar of strength susan up and hit the road with family in tow back to the east coast last summer. and after that crushing blow (i thought she would stay here, away from everyone and everything she grew up with, knows, and loves, just for me), it was with both selfless glee and selfish despair that i celebrated ruthie’s wedding, then said goodbye days before she left for france.

such a swirl of departures left me breathless and more than a little filled with longing for the women i call my dearest and most inspiring friends. but the carrot that dangled before them, that titillated their thoughts as they weighed options, saw possibilities, and made life- and location-changing decisions, was, for them, an opening in to growth, and evolution, and the next healthier place to be. and with that knowledge in me, and my own enormous wanderlust mostly satisfied in my teens and twenties, i wrapped them in my simple love with wishes of grace and safety, and said goodbye.

this year, these months, have been different. i have said goodbye, literally and sometimes silently, from within the space of my own heart, to another handful of women. women whom i love, and some who continue even from a vast distance to inspire me, women that i miss. but shifts occur. we shift, we change, we move toward and move away from. and what once fit so seamlessly suddenly, just doesn’t anymore.

when something or someone moves away from me, there is a space there, an opening – at least that is my experience as i have looked back upon the movement that has occurred within my life. the years and history laid out behind me show me that as something ebbs away, there may certainly be something already flowing toward. is it balance? i can’t imagine what else it would be. of course balance is the last thing i felt as loss hit, or i moved to yet another place by myself, or i lost the fight for someone or something i didn’t want to let go of. but in retrospect, if i let everything go for a moment and really look, there it is. balance. funny that i strive for it so earnestly and constantly with the feeling that it is just out of reach, that i achieve it only in the tiniest, fleeting moments. then i look back and see it there, calmly, in its almost mathematic perfection.

which brings me to the balance, however fragile and precarious and barely-there, of now. the last twelve months have kicked my ass in ways i never thought i could handle. the financial stress has woken me, and then kept me awake, more nights than not. watching my business crumble at the same time i have been job-searching in an economic slump has humbled and exhausted me. i’ve brainstormed tirelessly to figure out how, as a forty-four year old artist and single parent to my now six year old daughter, i can weave a beautiful life for myself and for her, and keep my creative soul intact. i have experienced the deepest loneliness. i have asked for help from people – my friends, my family – after twenty-five years of never needing help. never. i’ve been paving and paying my own way, and supporting my own decisions, since i was fourteen.

but shifts happen – as i mentioned before – and gratefully it seems i have been able to leap off the last year’s hamster wheel, at last. my family has scrambled to keep me afloat, my sister has given countless pep talks, a few amazing friends have listened and love-bombed, and i placed one of the toughest phone calls i’ve made to ask a friend for help. but in what felt like a single moment, the wind which has been blowing against me for what seems a very long time, changed course suddenly, and i find it now at my back, a lovelier breeze, easing me along.

why did the wind shift course? a shift in energy, that’s what i believe. a singular, specific shift. suffice it to say that a friend, one of a few that have shown me extraordinary faith, pulled me in to her environment and gave me a place to sit for a time. and other people there, the ones that also sit for a time and do what they do, welcomed me and made me fall in love with them and showered me with gifts, the kind you feel but never see. and once that person’s gesture opened a space for me, another person’s gesture showed up – gloriously and without actual cause! – and then another. and the little shift became a larger shift, and i watched incredulously as i experienced the domino effect of someone saying, hi, i see you, and yes, i can give you a little help. and thanks to her, and the others who have shown up recently, and the ones that have been there all along, i think now i will be okay, maybe even better than okay. and as sad as i have been to say goodbye to so much and so many this year, there is balance and love in the company i keep. my gratitude is endless.

an addendum, in pictures

there is the space that is described in words. and the space that is described in pictures. now you have both.

the space(s) between

remember around valentine’s day when i blogged about love? how it was consuming, and saturating, and fluid, moving around and filling up all the tiny spaces in my life, bringing joy, and angst, hunger, and comfort. two months later, here i am still, watching it all continue to move, when i can step away from things for a moment to find quietude, or a place to sit down and just let everything wash down over my head. all these visceral shifts are taking place – literally, i feel them – and what i’ve found, sitting right next to love and gratefulness in all those openings and internal empty spaces is, well, space.

i mean space in every way you can imagine. physically, emotionally, my head space, my heart space, the space under my ribs when i remember to breathe, the vibrating, chemical space between me and the handsome stranger (why does that always happen at the market?), the wide open space surrounding my 117 pound frame in my over-sized bed. maya is there with me at times, the space between us so whisper thin that it barely exists, her hair in mine, her arm thrown across my chest, her bedtime breath warm on my neck.

space figures enormously here in kerri-lynne land. i am preoccupied with and compelled by and acutely sensitive to my environment. for me the moving of furniture is an organic, never-ending ritual (poor rick used to crash in to the new arrangements in the dark after a gig. awakening to an exasperated ‘dammit kerri!’ at three in the morning became a common line in our shared-life song), not for how it looks but for how the movement of it can invigorate and inspire. rearranging furniture is like hitting the refresh button on my computer – going in, making changes, moving things around until the feeling is just right, then hitting a button to lock it in. until the need arises to mix it all up again.

at home are all of the things. the colors and textures and objects that create a certain space. there are corners of refuge, centers of activity, places to bundle up, strip down, spread out the paints, or the newspaper, or the wineglasses once the food has been made and someone is on their way. photographs line the mantle to show friends where and who we come from, and to remind us of who we have been. the wedding picture in the wedding picture frame now holds the christmas picture of maya; thus it is now the maya picture frame. but it has its history, and remembers what it once stood for, especially with the beautiful black & white photograph of ricky and me cracking up during our wedding ceremony tucked safely behind the picture of maya. lest we all forget.

and if it seems silly, the way i believe that objects carry history – that we can feel it, sense it, the way picking up something and turning it over in your hand can crack open a memory or send a vibration of recognition down your spine, then perhaps there is a difference between old souls and young. i once, in my twenties, left my office in pasadena to grab a coffee and get some fresh air on a weird, blustery spring day. the wind was pushing leaves and trash around the streets, and the air was charged with something, as though a storm was about to hit. i stepped in to my favorite antique store on green street, and for one single moment, when my hand touched the doorknob, everything went to black and white and i couldn’t remember my name and had no idea where i was. as quickly as it flashed it was over, but i can pull that memory up from fifteen years ago and remember just how it was to lose my sense of self and equilibrium, no matter how fleeting the experience was.

my relationship to and with objects is absurdly strong, it has always been this way for me. when i was little i would go in to the field behind our house and find the most beautiful rocks, rocks that sparkled with color under black light. in idyllwild it was arrowheads that had been buried for years, even a geode once that my neighbor broke open, revealing clusters of crystals inside. my mom was convinced i would become a geologist, so quirky and informed was my ability to find stone treasures amid a dusty field or shady mountainside. eventually the rocks got tucked in to boxes, which eventually got pushed to the back of my closet. but the desire to find connection, feel history, turn something over in my hand and let it resonate, never left. it just parlayed itself in to other sorts of objects as i moved down different paths.

and so my house, in all of its elegant-old-treehouse-by-the-ocean-ness, is a gallery of sorts, the space that contains all the things i’ve created, collected, held and loved. old clocks and paintings and too many cups. there is a long, wooden slab of sorts – it has legs and holds no purpose except to provide a resting place for the dried lemons and artichokes and pomegranates i’ve carted around for way too many years; dusty, faded, dry fruit that is a perfect still-life, a memory-induced journey to a friend’s sparse apartment in old montreal. blair had a bowl of dried fruit in the center of a quiet wooden table, in the middle of a pale dining room surrounded by more pale walls and rooms. it was the only splash of almost-color in the room, and its spare beauty took my breath away at the same time i felt the incredible loneliness of blair’s painfully simple life. his choice, but my sadness. he was as pale as his walls; he needed more objects, more color, to buoy him.

i stop here, for a minute. i look around. maya is suddenly calling out ‘no!’ in her sleep. her voice, her world, her night-time dreams, they are here under our shared ceiling, our shared space. lucy sleeps next to me on her doggybed, snoring; she’ll be there until she makes her way down the hall to my room, so i can help her on to my bed, where we will battle for covers and the ability to stretch out during the night. i walk from room to room. dishes drying, pears in a bowl. the light blinking on my phone, messages from some of the people i love. baskets of paints, piles of wool felt, a stack of children’s books to send out. my work. what drives me, makes sense to me. an olive jar filled with paint brushes. piles of business cards, piles of books, the have-yet-to-read sunday paper. do these things that describe me occupy this space, or do i? or are we simply here together, moving in and out and around each other, co-existing, remembering moments, witnessing the passage of time. keeping in mind that photographs, in frames, sometimes have behind them, providing support, other photographs.

a string of gifts (or, the longest blog i’ve ever posted)

the leap from 43 to 44 last week felt enormous. miles long? hours? i don’t know how to measure it. i only know it appeared at week’s beginning as a simple and painless move from one day to another; by wednesday my birthday was just a day away but i was bouncing between highs and lows as i awaited 44. this all sounds terribly dramatic – really i think it was simply a wonderously strange week.

monday was a barbie-dream-day kind of day. coffee & bagels with judes and my sissy lou. loreen giving me The Sister Ring, that one we have been searching for a few years now, the one i haven’t been able to take off (it feels like it has been on my hand always). after coffee, a mystery appointment (fabuloso!), shopping, chicken tawook with extra garlic sauce at open sesame, all the indulgent things i never get to do. the saleswoman at macy’s amazed at my mom’s beauty, at all of us as we [per usual] took over the jewelry & sunglass counters and probably laughed too loud. and in me, a weird sort of soft pride way down deep as, instead of mother, i reveled in the role of daughter and sister for a few moments. i am rarely not a mom; likewise, i am rarely just a daughter or sister. those roles used to accompany me almost everywhere. to feel them now, in moments or hours, means getting to drop everything and feel cared for in the most gorgeous of ways. the day wasn’t extravagant, but it was perfect. perfect gift number one.

i bounced into tuesday. literally. awoke to maya jumping on my head and my bed and within five minutes i morphed into mommie-dearest mom trying to get her fed and to school on time. then lovely coffee with lovely Estranged Husband rick whose birthday it was, and then bam! a weird gear-switch as hours later i packed up my sweet kittycat blue for a visit to the vet where i knew we would say goodbye.

i had planned on doing it alone, but rick in his kindness chose to come, even though it was his birthday. truthfully, i don’t think i could have done it alone. blue was the first little thing i called my own when i came to long beach almost thirteen years ago. her passing last week was for me another really difficult moment of letting go of what was. of saying goodbye to not only her, but to many significant and forever life-altering chapters of my life. she was there, in the background, for so many Big Moments. it was hard and my sadness is without words, but i got to be with blue for a long time before and after, and i was brave and so was she, and ricky drove me home and i got to cry in his car for a long time (thank you ryki). my goodbye to blue and her goodbye to me was very difficult but it was, in its own way, a perfect gift number two.

wednesday was ryan’s birthday, sandwiched between mine and ricky’s. somewhere that day came the unbelievable news that june would be flying down from northern california for friday night! i couldn’t stop beaming. i made a cake and rick and i joined up with everyone in bellefleur to eat the best pizza imaginable and to watch maya hang out with her fake cousins during ryan’s birthday celebration. she absolutely…shone. engaged in kid-conversation, dancing around and giggling with the boys, looking up at the girls with that weird brand of ‘you’re a big girl’ love pouring out of her eyes. rick and i kept exchanging looks and whispering to each other about her everything; her impossible impishness, her voice, her eyes huge as she listened to something with her 5.5 year old earnestness. ricky and maya and i are the most unorthodox family i know. we are three people orbiting around a million commonalities: around parenting, around our own separate evolution(s), around a central and undeniable core of love. within it all, there are moments of joy and gratitude and anxiety and sadness and learning. that is family, whatever it looks like from the outside. we are family. perfect gift number three.

thursday, it became my turn, the big day of landing in the double digits, again. the day was work, work, money and work, but that evening maya’s best pal audrey and my very own susan joined us for mexican food in the neighborhood. the girls drew pictures and clowned around. susan and i drank beer with dinner and talked about life before being ambushed by our girls outside the restaurant. long beach sometimes feels so cast off from the world at large and it was one of those nights… going from one cozy space to the next, we had coffee and rice krispie treats just as the sun was going down. a sunset that was streaks of purple and pink, the santa anas starting to blow their warm winds, the simple sweetness of two of our best friends waving goodbye from across a parking lot. perfect gift number four.

and finally, friday. a lovely calm day before the martini storm to come. a day of puttering around in my pajamas, watching a movie, long distance phone calls, caffe lattes at peets, another movie, a nap and a bubble bath, all leading up to eyeliner and tight jeans and cocktails with my closest friends on a dog-friendly patio at my favorite beach side restaurant. it wasn’t the evening that i had expected, been promised, but it was my birthday, and i vowed to be fully with the people who were choosing to be with me. it was chilly outside but loreen gave everyone scarves as gifts, so we bundled up and spent a gorgeous two hours eating appetizers and drinking before heading to the gaslamp for dancing. a few more girls dropped off along the way, but those of us who remained had more fancy cocktails, laughed our asses off and danced (juney) until last call. ricky rapped in dedication to me, and there were elegant orange candles in my birthday creme brulee. i didn’t want it to end! so delicious, this love-bombing, this saturation, this ending to a week of extremes. my perfect gift number five.

love.

oh, this day. the wind is blowing madly, and the rain which woke me up hours ago is still coming down. maya is with her papa, lucy is buried under blankets at the end of my bed, and here inside, it is quiet and empty and the walls are saturated with that yellow gray light that is a california rain storm.

i have been thinking a lot about love. thinking love and feeling love. i use the word a lot, and though i try and try to find some other descriptive about the deep joy i feel in parts of my life, i always come back to those four letters.

i am forty three years old, soon to be forty four. i have many friends who are older than me, and a gorgeous handful that are younger. my friends have always spanned a number of ages. now, in the years since maya came in to my life, shared circumstances, and the things that define us as we have found our loves, had children and settled in to a quieter life, have placed most of us together in similar moments of our middle life.

for me, here in the middle, there is what has been – painting and travel and education: a few lives lived in different cities on a different continent. there is language, and books read in winter, and a hundred meals shared in strange foreign restaurants. there have been a few big loves. i have fallen on icy cobblestone streets in quebec city and had water poured down the front of my shirt in a club in stockholm. there have been moments of lust, moments of longing, and the moment trudeau squirted me in the eye with lemon juice the first time we had lunch together at l’orchidee du chine, his favorite restaurant in montreal. there was a summer in toronto with a soul mate, and the twist of pain in my heart the first time he yelled at me inexplicably, a pattern forming until i had to leave months later, knowing i might be hurt.

there is signe, my twin, the friend one can imagine and hope for and dream of, until she is there with her golden eyes and kindness and her garden smell that recalls all those moments of a friendship that has now spanned decades. when we are lucky, we are together to bicycle to her favorite bar in amsterdam while niek is home with the kids, or here in a softer climate for barbeque and margaritas. recently, though not recently enough, there was the port-induced journey out of her house at three in the morning to buy cigarettes from the vending machine at the american hilton. getting yelled at when we tried to sneak back in to the house, signe and i laughing hysterically when i tripped up the stairs, being half of my thirty five years again for a few moments.

there is rick, our laughter, our house, our wedding, the birth of maya. letting go of jaxson, our gentle, beloved dog. letting go of our home, the one we renovated one room at a time, where our friends gathered, where rescued dogs came to live for a while, where i could stretch out in the bathtub and sing. the home we brought our newborn maya to. and finally, letting go of us. ten years of learning how to be together, and then the months and months of learning how to be apart, how to extricate ourselves from a life intertwined, how to be alone in the big bed (that at first seemed the size of a small country) without that feeling of loss in your stomach. And now, most importantly, regaining trust, parenting together with integrity, learning to be friends in a way that allows for growth, for forgiveness. for our love to be reshaped and redefined, as a space for new love is created.

which brings me to now. and love. i am filled with it. it spans an ocean to reach ruth and signe and javier. it drives north to bellefleur so i can sit in my sister’s living room and let everything drop for a while. it wraps itself around my heart in the moments i am lucky enough to be with my parents and realize how much they have worked for and given to me. love carries me through the moments when my grace falters and i am about to lose sight of my patience in raising my daughter. and it blooms over and over again like a brilliant flower every day as the people who share my life touch down, drink wine with me, make food, write poems, create beauty, wipe my tears and remind me that i can do this. and love sits, has coffee with me, makes me laugh, surprises me with its tenderness, compels me with its depth, makes me want to meet and be met. ah, if only love knew. i sit beside love, and wait.

lost in transition

wow. has it actually been five weeks since i was here?

the last thirty days are a blur, beginning with the purchase of a hello kitty pink and yellow big girl bike for my daughter days before christmas, and ending with obama officially taking office tuesday. i cried over both events. time is moving so fast, and suddenly maya is nearing six and becoming this complicated, beautiful bundle of a person. not so suddenly – as our past confirms – an african american stepped into an enormous pair of shoes formerly occupied by white men only.

i am in awe, witnessing both. i am struck down evenly it seems by events existing on a global scale, and those that are tiny fragments of a daily life, lived. yesterday i cried in my living room with millions around the world as i watched history unfold. this morning i watched the rise and fall of my daughter’s chest as she slept next to me, her breath on my pillow, her eyes fluttering in a dream. i can’t discern between which feels bigger, more important, takes me out at the knees more efficiently.

this must be the middle ground, the place where we have dropped enough of ourselves to know that our tiny place in this world still allows us a front row seat to moments of enormous importance. likewise, the bend of maya’s wrist, the sound of a best friend’s laugh crossing an ocean to reach me, a box of love letters recently found that pull me like an intake of breath into moments of a younger life, remind me of the singularity of my one life lived. as i grow older i want to renounce the cliches of aging. but they hold truth, for this is intense, and layered, the blessings and curses of this mortal coil.

so in the tumble of it all, what gets let go of? 2008 is gone, 2009 arrived like a wished-for early spring. bush is out, obama is in (big, deep, collective sigh of relief). national self esteem and confidence is spider-web fragile compared to years of the posturing and half-truths and arrogance that have held us like anchor cable. is the loss, the letting go, bad? financially, yes: everyone i know is hurting financially. but for months and months – on bumper stickers, in windows, on winter lawns – have been the signs that so many are ready for an enormous, life-affirming change. for harmony, and fairness. for a sense that on the tiniest levels and the biggest, we may return to a simpler, more caring way of co-existing. return to balance.

hope and optimism swirl around my ankles like sea water; i want to hold my breath until some firecracker-blast-big proof shows us things are changing. i imagine for a moment that such change may mean a kinder, more humane existence. that instead of being lost in transition, something will be found. and that somehow, balanced as if on a wire strung between the world at large and the hundred million moments and decisions that make up the world i share with my daughter, i will stay at least precariously upright, and in some moments, even graceful.

almond champagne

for me there is nothing close to the feeling of holidays in winter. even here, without a snowflake in sight, i feel wrapped up from head to toe when we’ve celebrated thanksgiving and the countdown to christmas begins. it has nothing to do with the ridiculousness of christmas decor on streets and in storefronts before halloween when southern california hits a brisk 78, if we are lucky. and with utter joy i can state there is virtually no ritual in my family around christmas shopping. mall? what’s a mall? what could possibly draw a gazillion people to one of them one day after giving thanks for all we have, to simply Get More, discount or not.

this year is my third christmas as a single parent, that is to say, where the rituals i learned from my mom and celebrated with my family growing up, i’ve handled on my own, much as i did in san francisco when i was single and in my late twenties. my best pal but Estranged Husband ricky and i are always together and present for our daughter on these big days – holidays, school plays, birthdays, anything having to do with a family being a family or maya getting presents. i am grateful, so deeply grateful, that we crack each other up and still love each other and all the extended family and ALWAYS get big, fat coffees at the start of these now occasional celebrations. but as maya gets older, and the holidays start to mean something to her, i begin to feel the weight of making them glitter and sparkle for her, especially on my own. i want her to love this month of colors and smells and twinkle lights and song as much as i do.

somehow in the midst of all these ruminations – not to mention the job search, the highly sensitive kindergartener, an economy in ruins, newly discovered cellulite on my ass, and twelve thousand unfinished projects on my studio table – i found a night with a handful of my close friends and my only sister to drop all the tasks and just be together. i made food and bought food and stocked the fridge with almond champagne. i clustered candles on my mantel, found my favorite stevie wonder cd, and dragged a christmas tree in to my house with minutes to spare. never mind that it wasn’t decorated; my living room smelled like vermont.

all i did that evening was laugh. so hard that my stomach ached the next day. there are those moments when people come together and there are no expectations of what will happen, just the knowledge that something will. there is so much love and comfort and the sharpest of wits, and sweet faces in candlelight, and history, so much gorgeous history… how could it be anything but another gathering of perfect moments?

in the lovely aftermath of that evening (and yes, a slight hangover), i relaxed. maya may not end up embracing christmas as i do, but i am going to give her so many perfect moments around it, she’ll be hard-pressed not to. and if it means getting the christmas tree in to my car and up the stairs all by myself, making pillsbury cinnamon rolls from the can on christmas morning because my mom had them for us every year without fail, or rick and i putting her big girl bed together at three in morning the same night his father passed away because we promised santa was bringing it in his sleigh, then so be it.

christmas is not money or gifts or how many lights you can display in your yard. it is tradition, the gathering of people who you love and who define your life. last wednesday night, in all that candlelight, and the beautiful thin glasses filled with almond champagne, i listened to stories, laughed until i had to pee, and looked in to the faces of a few women i feel enormous love for. it is only the second  holiday evening we’ve shared at my house, but with this second year, it becomes its own tradition. ruthie will be with us next year. maybe we can seduce linda lu to come from massachusetts. whatever shape it takes, it will be. its why i love this season. with family, with friends, with my beautiful girl maya, it is a promised gathering of perfect moments.