tonight I willfully remember her as a baby, taking in the curve of her cheek in the dark of her bedroom, the little smile curving into it and my eyes fill it out, add the baby fat and take away the teeth so I'm seeing a gummy grin, and she's not so different now, I think, except maybe a little more perfect because she is more whole, all complicated angles and inner machinations. a little person who infuriates me and surprises me and still knocks me over with the weight of all this love I have for her. she who curls an arm around my neck and breathes, "I love you a billion trillion" and kisses my chin and squinches her eyes and in the next breath says, "I AM sleeping." and then shuffles her feet and then relaxes, asks, "Is a billion trillion a lot?"

how to make a salad

cut the green onion, slice with the wrong knife
push the same knife through the wrinkled red tomato
wade through the juice of the overripe tomato
feel the large fist squeezing like a vise around your spine
push the cat away from your feet

press your lips together, swallow
the sob making its traitorous way;
it fills the tight hollow of your cheeks.
your teeth ache.

shoo the cat again, who abandons you
to chase a hobbled cricket.

the wilted arugula goes in the bowl.
wince at small sounds, argue with the defeating drum of doubt
marching up and down your back.
your heart swells. leaks.

smaller bones are disintegrating. like mica. into dust.

add the tomatoes, the green onion,
last night's roasted chicken. shake the dregs of your
fat free balsalmic vinegar dressing on the mix.

sit with your bowl and consider:
here is what I made today. swallow it into emptiness.
fill yourself up.

I'm listening to a philosophy lecture, and the professor asks, "Is there an end to space? Does it just go on and on forever?" Even contemplating an answer to that question is hard for most people, she says - they wouldn't even know where to begin.

It's familiar for me, this question, because it makes me think of motherhood, of the enormity of these little lives before me, the little people I have to grow and develop. It's not a task. Not a bullet point, not a goal. It's an enormous endeavor, an odyssey.

And it's hard to wrap my mind around it because it's me standing at the edge of the world, staring out into an endless space, trying to make sense of it. Trying to decide what I believe in, how far I can stretch out into the deep expanse, trying to intuit where I think it goes and if it ends or goes on forever.

Before I can do that, any of it, even begin to stare down the void, I have to try and understand myself, unequivocably, and to understand myself separately from my daughters, and it's just impossible. They're standing right there with me facing down the void, and we have to step out there. I have to take them with me. It's the scariest thing I can think of, what we'll find in that void, and I hope it isn't a void at all. I hope it's a space filled with color and the softest shadows and light. I hope it's life on distant planets and joy, but from here, I just don't see it. But we're taking those first steps out anyway. Here we go, girls. I ask them to trust me and can't think of why they should. Except.

Them. For all that deep scary blackness I see in front of me, I see them putting it to shame. They are my life on distant planets, all the color and light, all the joy the universe could know. They are what the atomists believed in, atoms, atoms that can't be created or destroyed. They are infinite, they are the stuff of life, and they have created me, these girls.

I believe in them, their worth, their intrinsic, indivisble, infinite worth. And if I believe in them, I should believe in me, too.

The philosophy lecturer posits that if you believe there is an end to space, you have to think you'd reach a point where you can't reach your arm out, there'd be nowhere to put it. Is that possible? And I can link my arms with my daughters' arms, hold their small hands, fill my ears with their sounds and kiss their soft faces. Tangible evidence of infinity, belief in a thing that goes on forever.

I'm sorry, little girl, because love is not always easy. Because right now you and I are engaged in this terrible push and pull. You are inserting your tiny will all over the place, mostly with me, laying down rules that I don't agree with. Ignoring my rules because you don't agree with them. And we're both ignoring each other's wills and I'm looking for a middle ground and I don't even think it's there. I think we're stuck in this eternal pull, a knot of tension between us, and somewhere in that knot is something softer, a love that simmers and glows and I'm trying to unwrap my fists from around and somehow convince you to let go so that soft love can grow bigger, and wider, and even softer. I want us not to be sorry the next morning. I want us to be happy to love to feel good about each other. No easy conclusion, no big answers, just nothing right now. Nothing but I love you and I know you love me and I'm sorry things are hard. I love you. Nothing and everything.

I hope so.

"Mama?" She asks me early this morning, curled into the crook of my arm. "Today are we going to put shiny stars on the blueberry tree? The orange blueberry tree?"

is it grief
that folds you over at the waist
and crumples you to the ice
this impulse to bend,
to give way to something
wracking your bones with shock

an evening unraveled long and flat,
a length of barbed wire a grassy plain a broken fence
monsters rattling dirt and stones a scuffed heel
kicked heel broken nose
a fist of blood a sorry, sorry and weeping
silent

it's silent here
convinced monsters aren't real
if only if only
if only they weren't stomping the floor
or remembering the path from your throat to your feet
your throat to your feet

everything in you is pricked
and falling

This is dark, it's a tumbler. It's a wash.
These brown leaves, these shivering things.
What I want is to feel my way through
the lock of this gray cacoon. Because there are
cracks in this cover, enough for a finger
or two to slip their way through
Because there is light on the other side
Because there is hope.
God damn it. I am strong enough.
God damn it I should be fighting this great,
gaping yawn and this tight chest that lets
no breath out. God damn it, I should be screaming
Say it now: I AM SCREAMING. And this will
open up all the way. I will learn to let life through.

In the dark of her room, she curles herself into a wisp of a girl, head burrowed against my cheek. I rub her back, stroke her hair. She sends an arm around my neck, tugging me in a quick, sure hug. There is that pleasant lock of things fitting. Daughter leaning into mother, learning about this simple love.

One foot in front of the other. Again and again. Fast. Running toward nothing, really, but the horizon in front of you, the vast stretch of blue, the trees reaching up and up, the white clouds, the silence.

Sometimes it's perfect, this running. Your muscles feel fantastic and your breathing is effortless and you have so much energy you can't believe it, and you are bounding toward that horizon, eyes fixed on it, and basking in it. Your mind is a perfect blank, a quiet space full of peace. That horizon is not so far away. You will get there.

And some days it isn't at all perfect, and nothing is working right. Your muscles are tired, your bones are tired and your feet are sore and you can't get your breath to work right and you are just distracted. Thinking of work and kids and the million things you should be doing right then, but here you are. Running. And on days like this you can't even look at the horizon, except maybe in stolen glances as you run. Mostly you train your eyes ahead of you, at some imaginary point in the sidewalk, and you go. You just keep moving. You can't even contemplate that horizon. But you will still get there.

Today was the latter. My feet hurt and my legs were tired and I was thinking about all the work I'd left undone before I stepped out for the run. But I kept running. This is for me, I told myself over and over. This is for me.

She counts up until the 12th stone and then pauses, because this is where the cold snakes through the brown grass, there in the beating summer sun. It's the briefest of shivers, a sudden shudder, and it passes. The hair prickles at her neck and stays until the 16th stone, where she gets the feeling that the world has gone hazy, and this is brief, too, and she keeps going -- even though now everything is in sharp focus and too quiet, and there is the steady, ominous buzz of cicadas sounding from all around.

The 29th stone brings her to the front steps of the old building, and she is staring at the big yellow NO TRESPASSING sign, and the spray-painted red X on the door, and the jagged jaws of the building's stairs hanging open, ready to swallow a foot, an ankle, her whole self if she's not careful.

A normal person would not go inside, she thinks, before she climbs the stairs with ease born only from lots of practice, dodges the weaker parts of the porch, then plunges inside the feral building, daring it to eat her up.

Mostly freewrite

It's a cool evening. It's been raining for the last three days, and the skies are a heavy gray, and the clouds are dipping low enough you could almost touch them. Everything is wet and mud, and there is a crisp, clean feeling in the air that stirs up all this melancholy in me, unbidden, an effect that brings me right back to 13-years-old, sitting on my bed with the windows open, the rusty-wet smell of the window screen filling the room, the soft quiet of the tucked-in neighborhood, porchlights glowing, TVs flickering in windows.

At that age, I was shy and quiet, and I filled up all my time with notebooks and a much-loved copy of a Sara Teasdale book I checked and re-checked from the library on a regular basis. This is when I started to really explore words, to understand their power, and to feel how comforting they could be.

There will come soft rains and the smell of the ground,
And swallows circling with their shimmering sound;

And I am feeling sad, now, I think because there was this sweet little marriage of possibility and discovery happening then, the stuff where dreams can grow if you let them, and I never gave those dreams a name, never any words, but I kept writing, and I kept writing, and I kept writing, and then one day I all but stopped. It was magic one day and then it wasn't. And I had no words.

And frogs in the pool singing at night,
And wild plum trees in tremulous white;

Tonight Violet wanted to be a frog. "Ribbet ribbet," she said, that crazy-joy blooming in her smile, and she crouched down to jump but she can't figure out the mechanics yet, and so she crawled. I reached down to grab her and toss her up into the air. "Jump frog," I said and she squealed with joy, but when I sat her down she scurried down the hall, away from me, ribbeting all the way. A frog on her own terms.

Robins will wear their feathery fire,
Whistling their whims on a low fence-wire;

And not one will know of the war, not one
Will care at last when it is done.

How tiring to wrestle with yourself all the time, to feel so discontent because you feel you aren't doing enough, you aren't being enough, because you feel stuck. To feel sad that you didn't name your dreams when you were a 13-year-old girl. How exhausting. When will I learn that there is value in sitting still, to recognize that sometimes "stuck" is really a sign that you need to be still, if only for a minute. There is value in reflection, and you must lock yourself in a moment to reflect. You must be content where you are sitting.

Not one would mind, neither bird nor tree,
If mankind perished utterly;

And Spring herself when she woke at dawn
Would scarcely know that we were gone.

There is comfort here. To recognize that this little life is so much smaller than I know. And bigger, too. I can fill myself up with the world, let myself fill it, it will not matter. Except what I make of it.

Tentative

Here I am, standing in a small corner, looking out a giant expanse of possibility. It's wide and bright and I can't make out the details except what's in front of me, small things, 4 mile runs and vintage books and fresh coats of paint.

So I will take a step forward and name the things I see waiting before me, the things I can reach and hold or pass by and observe, but either way, moving forward.

Make books out of Mad and V's blogs.
Send children's story off to publisher.
Work on the Cactus Black and Cactus Pink story.
Become an expert in three different areas.
Go to Iceland.
Run a marathon.
Learn a language.
Create a living space for my family with intention, a place for us.
Take kickboxing lessons.
Institute Savory Sundays, where every thing we eat is delicious and thoughtfully prepared and good for you.
Have a garden that produces leafy greens, lots of tomatoes and onions. At least.
Get crafty again.
See Chris Bathgate live.
Tour the northeast at the peak of fall colors.

To be continued.....

I finish reading "The Geography of Bliss" while sitting on the bathroom floor at about 9 p.m., waiting for Madeleine to pee and/or have a bowel movement. Preferably the latter. As I read the last paragraph, Madeleine keeps making silly noises, kicking her feet and chuckling to herself. I look up from my book and scrunch my face at her. She stares at me in surprise for a second, eyes twinkling, then she bursts into delighted laughter. I smile and look down at my page. As I'm reading the last sentence, she asks me, "Are you happy, mama?" She asks the question like she knows I am.

"Well, yes," I respond, closing the book. "Why do you think I'm happy right now?"

"Because you're reading your book," she says.

"Yes, that's right," I say. "Reading this book makes me happy. But you know what else?"

"What?" She looks at me expectantly.

"I'm really happy because you are making funny noises, and when you laugh it makes me happy."

"Uh huh," she nods, like I was just confirming something she already knew.

I reach out and poke her tummy, and she laughs again. "I love you," I tell her.

"I love you, too, Ducky," she replies.

::::

My happiness is here, in this house, this bathroom, this moment where I am not angry because Madeleine is delaying bedtime, exasperated because she doesn't pee or poop, frustrated because I fully expect her to go back to her room and poop in her diaper. My happiness is just letting the moment be what it is, a quiet, gentle time that it is not at all ideal, but fine nonetheless. More than fine. Her brown eyes so bright they sparkle.

freewrite 3

There are dishes to wash and I just don't want to wash them. I keep returning to them over and over, washing one dish and then wandering away to do something else. So I guess I do want to wash them. No, that's not right. I want them clean, but I don't want to put in the effort. I think this is probably the root of every single problem in my life.

::::

Mad's wearing butterfly tights and Lightning McQueen rainboots. She's also wearing fairy wings. Violet's in purple plaid tights and cherry rainboots. Violet's running through the muddy puddle in the driveway, while Mad pokes mud nearby with stick, digging it deep, looking for worms. I'm on my back in the driveway, staring up at the sky - just turning blue again after three straight days of rain - and breathe in the air, the wind: it feels like fall again. A squirrel high in the tree above me keeps sending down acorn after acorn to hoard for the winter. He chatters at us.

Even though I'm sure it will be hot tomorrow, even though I'm sure that summer's not gone yet, I can tell from this moment, this wind, that fall is coming, and it's enough. "It's a perfect day," I tell my girls, sitting up to help Mad find worms. I dig and dig, uncovering fat, squirming worms and tiny thin ones, and drop them one by one into Mad's waiting, eager hands. Violet picks up clumps of dirt and drops them into Mad's worm container.

I think this is probably the root of every good thing in my life.

freewrite

It's cliche to start anything with rain, so I'll start with the car, humming warmly in the onslaught. I'll start with the headlights in the gloom and the slices of drops they illuminate. I'll start with the sound of rain rushing over metal, shooooooosh, and all the quiet in between, and the still. My daughter spent half the night tonight trying not to sleep, working herself into a frenzy over thunder, and part of the time crying because I wouldn't let her return to the couch to watch TV. I curled with her on her bed, finally, and just let her scream and cry, and in short order, she worked herself down into quiet whimpers, turning in toward me with her eyes clenched shut, one hand over her nose and the fingers from her other hand in her mouth. She sucks on the tip of her pointer finger and I am surprised; I didn't know she did that. I rub her back in circles and she giggles suddenly. And again. She's decided that this tickles her and I don't cut it short, I let her laugh, her little giggles popping into the air over and over, legs kicking in delight, and she doesn't even hear the thunder now, or see the lightning, everything is okay.

And suddenly my perspective shifts and I'm not annoyed any more, and I just pick her up and take her to the computer. "Mad, they have pictures of the storms on the computer," I tell her. "We can just take a look and see if it's going to storm anymore."

I pull up the weather radar and see that we are squarely in the green. "See the red, Mad? That's the really big storm, with lots of thunder and lightning. And see the yellow? Those are teeny tiny storms, no big deal. You might hear just a little bit of thunder, but nothing super-loud. See the green? That's just rain. And here's where we are," I point. "Right there in the green. So it's just rain for us, and all that red -- the big storm -- is far away from us. No big deal! And Mad, that red is probably not going to come back, but if it does, I will come and get you."

And she is okay with this, and repeats it to me as I take her back to bed. "We're in the green," she says. "It's just gonna rain! But if the red comes, you will come and get me. And if the yellow comes, it will just be little thunder."

"Yes," I tell her, and tuck her into bed. And she is fine.

It's not graceful to end with rain, either, but I'll do it. It's still raining and pitch black, and there are lizards running up and down the windows, reveling in the moisture, hunting for bugs. Thunder rolls through, low and quiet, and lights flash dim in the distance. Everyone is asleep. Everything is quiet.

freewrite

Sticky hot, and miserable, my limbs are heavy and tired. My eyes are fuzzy; it feels like sand beneath my lids. Things are slightly out of focus and I have the stirring of a headache at my temple. I don't really want to be here, but I'm trudging along, trying to find my way through the muck, to find comfort in old patterns. It's not what I want to do, but I know it's what I should do, and that right now, when I feel this way, what I want to do is a trap. I don't want to get stuck there.

I want to smash through this fuzziness, plow through it, remember energy coursing in my muscles. Remember joy. Remember that life isn't this gross haze I've been slogging in.

My husband is walking just behind me with Violet; I am walking with Mad. Mad is carrying a clear plastic tupperware container, excited at the prospect of catching a lizard. I wonder at her dogged enthusiasm for the endeavor, and wonder at the stirring of excitement I always feel at the prospect of lizard-hunting. I'm sure that one day we'll find The Big One, meaning that we'll find some lizard, any lizard, and bring it home. Mad would be ecstatic.

Violet's been in a mood, but when she sees me ahead, she breaks into a smile and runs to me yelling "Mama!" And I am worried she's going to trip because she's still so....loose, her legs folding around each other, arms open outward, she's reaching for me.

But she makes it to me as I close the distance and I pick her up and swing her high into the air and she is all smiles, and I take a minute to appreciate her smile, the way happiness just beams from her face when she smiles, the way her eyes pop with joy.

We make it to the dead end and stop for drinks and Wayland and Mad go down a side path looking for lizards, and I peer worriedly down at them as they navigate a steep wall leading down to a chasm where the river is winding through. I don't worry too much, because I know Wayland would never let her fall, that he's careful, and then I wonder at my steady belief in that.

Violet is thrilled because Mad's leaving her stuffed cats unattended, and she's talking to them and moving them from cement block to cement block, sorting. I lean back on one of the cement blocks and stare up at the sky and wish I had my camera because the light is beating through the trees overhead in a different way. It's still summer and still hot, but it feels different somehow, less oppressive, and as the sun warms my skin and I rest and listen to Violet playing happily. I wonder why people feel compelled to take pictures of the sky, and I know it's not really so much an attempt to capture what they're looking at but how they feel when they look at it, that there are days when the sky and you match perfectly, the wide expanse, the sun the stuff of life and you believe in it, you feel it's blessing you: go ahead and hope. Really, it's why you're here.

And Wayland and Mad come back and they don't have a lizard, but they go to another side path and a few minutes later they come back out and Mad is holding her tupperware container out in front of her, looking triumphant. "Tell her," says Wayland and Mad is so excited she can't really tell me anything. She thrusts the tupperware container out and finally says lizard! And I am on my feet peering inside.

"She caught it herself," says Wayland. "I had nothing to do with it; she just plucked it from the ground and said, 'A SKINK!'"

I look at it. She was right -- it is a skink. I look at her beaming with pride.

In a few seconds the moment passes because Mad notices that Violet is playing with her cats and there is the usual fight over stuff. It is time to go home and the girls fall apart; Mad is tired and ignoring our directions, Violet is tired and crying, wanting to walk but not really wanting to walk, so the whole walk home is trying to make her okay with being held but mostly just juggling her weight, trying not to drop her as she thrashes angrily. And I am miserable in it, miserable again.

Life is that. A journey that is sometimes miserable, sometimes not, toward a goal that may or may not pan out. But you go, you do it anyway, because that moment of realization, that second of attainment - the smiling daughters, the caught lizard - is what you live for. It's what you ache for. It's what sustains you on the second leg of the journey, when all you want to do is run away, or at least stop moving, or just fast forward yourself to the next destination.

I want to learn these things, then remember I have to relearn them over and over again. I want my daughters to know these things. I want them to always look for lizards. I want them always to seize the moment, grasp opportunity, like Violet did when she played with Mad's toys. I want them to always stare up at the sky even when they are tired and restless and feel miserable, and recognize it, I want them to always want to take its picture.

Dear 29

Remember when we met? It was the day I ran my first 5K, which felt like it marked something triumphant. Like I had accomplished something. It did. I had. We had a few good months after that, but then things starting turning south. It seems to me, 29, that we never really recovered from that.

Look. I know any relationship will have turmoil. I know that a marker of a good relationship is how well you weather strife. So maybe this is all about me, because I just couldn't deal. I tried and tried for as long as I could, but I just got so TIRED of trying. You know? I mean, some things should be easy. Some things should feel natural and effortless, and after a while, nothing did.

Do you really want me to go there? The job. The money. The neverending illnesses and foot injuries and home repairs and my husband's job and family trouble and....I could go on. But I won't because I think the point is this: We grew stagnant, 29. We just never really got above okay after a certain point.

We gave it a good go, didn't we? I mean, we had some moments, even when things were tough. But I think for the good of both of us, we have to just let this one go.

And, okay, fine. I didn't want to go here. There's someone new. 30. This may be painful to hear, but I think we're on the verge of something great. It's all very unknown right now. The future is wide open, clear, and hopefully, full of promise. I think I have to choose that. For you, for me. We deserve something better than the bleak past we have between us.

Plus, also, I HATE YOUR UGLY FACE, 29. You SUCK.

Love,

Amber

the next day, the black butterfly
is still battering the cement slopes
beneath the overpass, and my feet
are slamming into darkness, the
pavement meeting pace too quickly,
and everything is salt and wet,
and breath, and fast.

you held out longer than you thought you would
broke the marrow between your teeth, finally,
and spit out the shards. you pressed a hallelujah
in skin with fingernails. you raged.