Melting Shadows

The paintings on the wall of the Clay Center are small but powerful. I have come to them in a deepened and worried frame of mind. I call to Emma to wait, look at the picture, what does it say to you, which one is your favorite? Emma is consumed in the thin presence of Now, and doesn't know what answers I want. She merely tugs at her friend's sleeve, and then embraces her, which would be so awkward if she were grown and her friend was grown. I think to myself, we don't greet each other like that, as adults. I am cut off from the others, keeping Emma in my sight, because I am so unlike them. The good moms. The moms that bake cookies and put bows in their daughters' hair. Emma tucks her hair behind a protruding ear, and I almost audibly gasp at her naivety. Someday she will know she is different. She doesn't see it now, but someday she will exist there on the fringes where the population is spread out like the sheen of butter on a piece of bread. But now, she points to a painting of dots, dots of different colors and sizes. Whose borders, though, are perfectly curved in never ending lines. No paint bleeds outside the dots and their definity. The dots line up like soldiers readying for battle, in perfect formation. There is no room for me, a mom whose imperfection leaves prints in the wooden gallery floor. My dot would be oval, or shaped like an amoeba, blue paint spilling from its irregular shape. One painting is called "Melting Shadows", a modern looking thing of a painting, and I think of black-gray streaks on a unclean window. Emma is ready to go.

dissolving descending
in rivulets on the
dirty side of the window
I have forgotten the sun
where do these thin
streams of obscurity
originate out of the
bleak underbelly of the
gray sky I pull back
the rock of the day
dormant for too long
and reveal a tender
place that has no air
to heal light has
shriveled like the skin
of a hand held in water
too long the outside is
melting a candle that
cannot hold its shape
and loses itself over
a silver candelabra
I have become fluid the
tension of the surface
formed by gravity and
the laws of physics which
appears as the only things
that make sense

Eve of the Recital

she dances with grass stains on her tights
and demands that I twist her hair at the
nape of her neck into a tornado fastened
with brown bobby pins I watch her wave
her arms like weeping willow branches as
her bit of bangs falls to the corner of her
hazel eyes so unlike anyone and her
shirt brandishes peace signs as she
arabesques at her teacher’s command
slow movements like she is under water
I gaze at her stopping time to be in
awe of this fleck of a girl straight hair
ribs protruding under her clothes she bends
to tuck a loose ballet slipper lace away
and returns to first position so delicate
her fingers meet an invisible barrier but
carry the weight in a figurative basket of
air and grace so serious is she her pink
tutu bounces as she travels to center on
the toes of her tatty slippers they
must do until recital and I wonder what
flowers to bring to her that day as she
exits at curtain one I believe her favorites
are pink carnations as long as the wrapping is
pretty she completes her dance christened
Tiny Cakes and she is grave in the last turn
clock wise and on toes she proceeds
off stage I gather my things in my mind flowers
an offering to the performer I seek her in the
dancer’s dressing room filled with mottled colors
of tulle and tiny girls just learning to twirl

Quiet Time

I have devised the plan all afternoon. I am going to sneak away from the kids, quietly, in bare feet, to the bathroom, shut the door, draw a bath hot enough to hang on the edge of pain, and melt away worries and fret, like the dissolving in water layers of thin paper. I have so few moments like this, this hope of quiet and peace. I have made the preparations. It is like devising a plan for an intricate trip; I have fed the children and laid out clothes for the next day, and packed lunches. I have inched by Ethan's room without him hearing me (sometimes I think he recognizes the the sound of my footsteps by his door, and picks his tousled head off the pillow to cry for my attention). I have evaded Amelia, who has retreated to her room and her Barbies. I am in the bathroom now, the water runs into the tub, sending spirals of white steam into the air. It is deliciously quiet, except for water. I pull out my robe, a towel, and lay them across the tub, and it is so close, this moment of immersing into the water, of washing away, of pealing away emotion and tension. I have been so careful to find myself alone. I want to be alone. I deserve to be alone.

Emma does not feel this way. She comes into the bathroom as I am putting my feet in the water.

"Mommy is taking a bath," I say, delicately, like I am going to soon break this fragile quietness of steam and lapping water. I lower myself into the tub, but Emma comes further into the bathroom.

"Honey, mommy is taking a bath." This time it is a little sterner. I am demanding my privacy. I need this solitude right now like I need air to breathe. It is that essential to me.

Emma sits up on the side of the tub. She clearly is ignoring my comments. I am about to tell her to leave again, to tell her to mind me, that I am her mother, but she speaks, with her gaze turned away from me.

"Mommy," she says, "I need to ask you something." I see her profile, see her long eyelashes that curl up in an astonishing way; they are way too long to be real, but they are, and they have been astonishing since the day she was born; the doctor who delivered her commented on her eyelashes long before he commented on her being a girl.

"What is heaven like?"

Emma has always jolted me out of my false reverie, of this seeking of comfort that I think I can find in myself. She puts her child hand on my shoulder and jerks me back to her world of wonder and questions, questions that even adults don't know the answers to, but here she is, age seven, searching for answers she thinks are simple enough to come from within a steam filled bathroom, answers she thinks her mother knows.

She does not realize that most of the time, my hands are out in the dark, feeling my way along.

"I don't know, " I say. The water ripples and makes the sound the ripples make, of tiny waves slapping against themselves, as I shift my legs in the bathtub. What do I know of heaven? Have I thought about it really? I know I see light, light abounding everywhere, breaking free from the center of atoms and exploding, covering everything like ash. But what else is there? I consider this before I answer her, knowing that this might shape her heaven image for years and years. "I think it is whatever makes you happy."

"I think dogs live there. I think Jesus plays with them."

"I think you're right," I say. "And I think we will live in a big house."

"Will you play with me in heaven?"

Emma continues to balance on the lip of the tub. She runs her hand over the towel. She is waiting on my answer, which to her is all the truth she needs.

"Honey, of course I will play with you."

"And will Daddy be there? And Ethan and Amelia?" She continues to list all her family members that are important to her, that surround her in this life. She is concerned about everyone. She leaves no one out.

"Yes, eventually they will all be there."

Emma smiles. She is losing her baby teeth, and her smile is spacey and wide, and a perfect reflection of her happiness. There is a light bulb inside her, and it has been flipped on, and the light of it surrounds her.

"I think heaven sounds awesomest of all."

Emma is so articulate in the simplicity her child mind assigns to idea of heaven. I am reminded that little children see so clearly things that adults struggle to make sense of.

My bath ends soon after my conversation with Emma. She has carried out of the bathroom a picture in her head of the Heavenly Father playing with pets, and of a big field full of her family. My picture of heaven is still pierced through with light and life. And I know my grandfather is there picking the guitar.

Rules Made to Bend

"Adults are just obsolete children and to hell with them."
--Dr. Seuss


My daughter Amelia sees the world through a prism. She takes what is ordinary and puts it through her reality and it becomes something else entirely. Something that to me seems totally absurd. And when I look at her questioningly, she returns my gaze as if to say to me, "you must be the one with a problem".

Let me give you an example. Since it is Christmas, I have taken great pride in decorating the house. I like every Santa to have its place, every garland and ribbon to be just so. And of course, the nativity scene, which adorns, as it does every year, the top of the blanket chest in the living room, must always be arranged the way I imagined all the figures were the night of Jesus' birth: the baby, of course, is in the middle of the rest of the ceramic figurines, the angel stands directly over the baby, and Mary and Joseph on either side, and the wise men, well, they're positioned according to their height around the holy family to make the whole scene balanced. The stable animals (there are 3 of them) are carefully placed as if they are demurely looking over their shoulders, pleased to death at the birth of the Lord. I have put a lot of thought into the nativity, as you can see. This year, Amelia has taken a special fascination in the nativity scene. Much to my dismay, she sneaks into the living room and has a go at a multitude of arrangements for the baby Jesus. My personal favorite is the time her Barbies got involved in the whole scene. I don't know if all 4 year old girls are like this, but Amelia quickly disrobes all Barbies as soon as they are removed from their packages. I find naked Barbies everywhere. Thank goodness Barbie's expression never changes, or Amelia's Barbies would always have a look of shame and bewilderment at their lack of clothing. Anyway, when I walked into the living room one day, there was a parade of naked Barbies across the piano bench and one especially spry naked Barbie straddling the church Christmas card holder located on the piano. All the members of the Nativity, including the baby Jesus and the camel were all lined up on the blanket chest, watching the bawdy display. It was enough to make me blush if I weren't too surprised at Amelia's choice for the entertainment of the Wise Men.

And just today, I asked Amelia to put the Nativity scene back in its correct order, The Way Mommy Likes It. I left her to her work, and when I went back to check on her progress, the figures were are technically in the right spot, except that she had left no room in between any of them. The baby Jesus was horribly cramped in the center, and the Wise Men and Joseph were jockeying for their positions, much like they were at a heavy metal concert. I don't know how Mary fared; she was lost in the sea of ceramic headbangers.

My point is this: adults have rules of how they think things should be, and we attempt to stuff everything in those rules. We try to put everything in neat homogeneous boxes. We stuff religion in boxes, relationships in boxes, educational tracks in boxes, ideas about success, and accumulation of wealth and goods in boxes. Everything, everything can go into a box that is fitted and constrained with rules. But children don't yet, thank goodness, define their lives totally based on the existence of rules. The can take them and bend them and make them into such extraordinary and unexpected things. Amelia has her own ideas of the nativity, and even though they don't fit into my nativity box, it doesn't make it wrong.

Amelia is asleep by me now. It snowed about a foot this weekend, and our little plot of the world is covered in snow and ice and it is so cold. She chose to put on her bathing suit with a butterfly applique and a flimsy summer skirt to sleep in. I am glad for the mountain of covers over her. I wouldn't for a million years ask her to take that bathing suit off.