I Remember the School Bus

I remember the school bus. The smell of exhaust and tired maple trees. I remember sitting there, kindergarten-small, wearing a purple wool skirt on that hot September morning. I don’t care. I love that skirt. I love things I love and I want that color everywhere. It doesn’t matter that I am sweating. Doesn’t matter that I can’t go upside down and do handstands. Truth is, I would have done handstands right there, even in a skirt. Modesty was alien to me. Still is, but for a mild feeling of discomfort. Tiny blister on my heel while I’m dancing. It’s there, but it’s invisible and usually, I rebel against it, moving passionately with the sting, dancing harder for it. 

Bus is all kids and plastic - sweaty, packed with fresh trapper keepers and mechanical pencils. I look around me. Everyone is first-day nervous, well behaved, sitting-put on their naugahyde benches. Sticky and wide-eyed. Vicky, the bus driver, is strict. Even as the year progresses, those rides are tight. We get silly and laugh, but we stay in our seats. When the back of the bus becomes rowdy, she sends Lesley and me there to keep an eye on the 8th graders. We are so little. I am in love with everybody. 

I can’t talk to them though, the big kids. I just sit there small with Lesley, reporting back to Vicky at the end of the ride. 

Her technique was effective. When the big kids wanted to talk sex and rule-breaking, they did it hushed. I remember being confused a lot. Quietly, I had fantasies of showing myself. Do they know who I am? Do they know I can do handstands, backflips? I imagined myself tumbling down the center aisle. Turning school bus to circus show, dazzling students with a sudden break of routine-transit. Bus seats to gymnastic apparatus; shuttle to traveling stage. I wanted to be seen - all the invisible beauty I could feel, I wanted it out. I imagined this place we all thought predictable, as a dynamic playground. Everything still, waiting to come alive.

the everything I am without having to be

I am alone, wandering through music and literature.  There is magic in the sound of this home.  I dance for the dead and for the squirrels.  I dance to stretch my muscles and to be beautiful, part of the everything that is so perfectly itself here.

I long to be beautiful.  My breasts and skin, the curls in my hair, the lovely wrinkles, they are nothing for eternity.  The dance is somehow part of it though.  The doing nothing also fits in.  Sadness, longing, memories, they are all comfortable here. 

I wish for the sex lost to me through this life of woman-ness.  Years of it still out there, floundering, vying for attention, soaked in confusion.  If I could pull it back, reel it from the water, unbait the hook and put it in my pocket, I would.  A thousand circling and I have been seducing, because I thought I had to.

The Ocean tried to kill me once.  But I am here, alone with my body and nobody to see it - awkward, sexy.  The dance is sprinkled with mistakes and moments, so perfect, they can only exist when unseen.  Spiders and chickadees, the singing frogs and invisible ancestors, they applaud with their presence.  All movement is welcome.  I long for beauty and here, alone, I feel it, the everything I am without having to be. 

I felt it.  Even before the breasts and fine hairs growing between my legs, I felt the hunger.  I felt the eyes on me, waiting (or not) for a taste.  As if I could be tasted, as if one taste could be tried and the whole known. 

This music is so good, the only thing to do is fall in love.  I didn’t know it of course.  I was afraid of being consumed and so I sat safely, cutting off bits of flesh to lure the hungry.  Sex became my great defense.  I had control?  I was empowered?  I became exactly what they wanted.  It was easy, the formula obvious, advertised in language, taught at school, woven through cartoons, decorating the toolshed.  It was there for everyone to see and so I put it on.  It didn’t make the hunger go away, the hunger that was so terrifying.  At least I didn’t have to run.  That is what I thought.

I didn’t run.  I disappeared.  Under the veil of performance I turned my back on love.  In that Ocean, I couldn’t go deep.  I couldn’t swim with the weight of my disguise.

These days, I keep the company of ghosts and quartets.  I am alone.  It suits me.  It’s safe here.  Safe enough to undress.  To abandon hook and sinker, tend my wounds.  Grow back the pieces sacrificed to a sovereignty with little space for innocence.  Shed the armor grown into my skin.  

And (hushed) I secretly wish for a spy.  Some prince to see me.  He hides behind the oak tree.  This hero who knows me from afar as I get to know myself.  There will be no explaining.  I see him!  There, looking back at me, startled at having been discovered.  He watches and, like me, is upside down, hanging from a metal hoop fastened to the moon.  I recognize his likeness.  I relate to the lines in his brow.  When I touch mine, he copies the gesture, delicate in his movement.  He descends the aerial instrument, approaches the evening window.  We place hands on the glass and fall in Love, briefly.  We need nothing from each other so eventually, I pull the shade.  I climb the apparatus, lean back into music and, beautiful, return to the dance.

Nothing into Nothing

When the sun shines on my face in the early morning and dreams rise to the surface, then I know things. Before and after I am blind. Living on the sidewalk, breathing cotton, worried about nothing into nothing. 

In the dream there is a road. But it is the feeling that I remember. The feeling of truth that becomes marionette with every attempt to translate it. The theater of my dreams is a reflection of what is, shadow puppets of fragmented mythology. Oh holiest of arts - the cave, the flicker, the pointing hand.

I am looking at two sides of the highway. There is a center median, separating opposing lanes of traffic. Each side of the thoroughfare is a state of reality. At first I take for granted the death that would come if I were to be hit by a car. I am protecting something - some sense of identity, some figment of myself. 

I don’t remember by what means, but I make it to the center. Traffic passes with quantum speed on either side. There is an empty car here and I am compelled to get inside. Deep grey, worn, evenly bruised so that its shell is nondescript, a prop. 

A dark figure steps from behind the vehicle. It is his job to prevent me from getting in. There is an intention to do me harm. Cold terror as I realize I am trapped. Endless streams of traffic fasten me to the island. The sky is as grey as the car and lines separating the two are like fog - nouns blending into verbs - objects into being. 

Now as I write, I listen to a string quartet - desperate violins, quivering, suspended in baritone warmth. It becomes the score, perfect accompaniment to the feeling of the dream - or the newly invented feeling married now to the music. And so, the looming antagonist of this world dances with me. And I, afraid for life, attempt to maneuver around the car, find my way in, win this deadly game. I am protecting something - some sense of identity, some figment of myself. 

I don’t remember by what means it arrives, but suddenly there is understanding. It is not defined, not a voice from outside, but a blossoming of internal trust. The fear continues, but now it rides alongside the doubt that there is anything that can die. Nothing needs protection. 

In this center median, cars whizzing past, it is available, the understanding that death is not an ending to anything real. The other two sides of the highway, while safer in one sense from the perilous school of this middle world, are brilliantly constructed sets - facades of importance. Here, I suddenly know I cannot die, that I will come back to continue whatever journey captivates me. Even if I don’t know why.

I will get into this car. I step out from behind the driver’s side door. The cold, wet air is all over. There is a metallic taste in my mouth. I see the top of his head, hair grey, like everything. The violins are softer now. Budding courage pulls me from the habit of self defense. It is the gun I can taste. It flashes in his hand - eyes hard, black. Fear begs me to hide again, but the trust has grown too big for that. And now, despite the tension, a playful etude calls me forth. He holds up the weapon, hand shaking, tasked with this, his mission. And just as I cannot keep myself secret, he must shoot. Some divine bond holds us to these roles.

A million years fill the moment between the exit of the bullet and its entrance into my chest. And then, bloodless, breathless, I die. Just before or exactly when this happens, the knowing is there. The trust, triumphant. Blind to sight, I feel the highway, the sides, the traffic, blurring into nothing. And then, bloodless, breathless, I am born into the same moment, crouched behind the same car, knowing he is there, ready. 

Over and over again we dance, enact our scene, until the courage that was at once so painful, is easy. There is no hesitation. There is no car, no man. I am not there. 

And with the sad adagio of our string quartet, the morning sun shines on my face and shakes the knowing. As I wake, I am again living on the sidewalk, breathing cotton, worrying about nothing into nothing.

Morning After

Why write a feeling, if only to make it go away?

Why foster contentment in the rising paradox? Why not allow the need, the sorrow, the suffering to pour onto the page without apology?

Unjustified, unexplained.

Because a happy clause suppresses longing. The easily written lullaby subdues desperation and quiets unanswerable questions. 

I sit at the purple table. There are rhythmic boots and a radio voice.  Homes blue and yellow, unshucked and buttoned pretty. The old woman bent over with (what I thought were) years. Instead, it’s the leaf blower, pulling her lithe body into an aged shape.  She is not yet strong enough to be weak.

Nor am I. But I want to be. 

Open. To be possessed, to be inhabited.

Before, I wanted to spill into the world. I needed to justify my existence, share myself naked, unasked for. Now there is an inverse desire, a reckless invitation.

Penetrate me, fill me, understand me without my doing. I want to surrender to you.  

But I am not lover enough to trust your unknown. You, with your imperfections and desires, unseen agendas and optimism…all the things I play upon for the seduction. If you are charmed, you are untrustworthy. I need the unattainable man. One who will not be sirened.  

I need to be taken.  

Who is brave enough for that? Or even wants it these days?

So I become the hero, making love to myself on rainy nights.  Dressing in lace, dancing, hand sliding down my stomach to the sound of Hendrix guitar. Sweat on my thighs and the back of my neck. Breathing for the ficus and the philodendron. The longing slaughters my orgasm and makes it safe, makes it possible. 

Morning after, I return to the words, my journal, fat delusion of Nature’s pandering. There is no compass, no morality, no truth. So I write it. And when it sounds good, I feel better. Then worse, of course. Because truth is always denied in words and knowing evicts all that is known.

Dahlin' You

I’m sitting in a coffee shop.  Exeter, New Hampshire.  It’s unreasonably warm out there, but still chilly, November cold.  It’s December and I’m listening to "Famous Blue Raincoat."  It pulls at my heart in a way that isn’t difficult right now.  All the threads are out.  You could see them if you were here - in the public tears, the spontaneous weeping.

I don’t mind it.  I don’t mind when it gets unraveled like that - a puddle at my feet, untied shoelaces.

And I keep tripping over the strings and it hurts so good.  Because I need some proof that she’s gone.  That she was here.  That she entered the house with that beautiful scratchy voice, “Dahlin! How ah ya my dahlin?”  She would open her arms, stretching the Red Sox emblem forever emblazoned across the chest of every sweatshirt she wore.  She smelled good, familiar good…good like your favorite aunt’s house, and the wood fire welcoming you in after a long play in the snow, and the secret place where you used to hide - behind the big rock and underneath the scrawny maple just your size, and…  

“How is Calarado Dahlin?  You doin’ good out theah?”

“Oh Dahlin’ I’m fine.  Did you hea about Boab Schmitt?  I know, it’s so sad.  If ya gonna go though, he died doin’ what he loved.  How’s yah friend, the one who helps with the festival?”

Her hair sticks out of her cap like an unruly cottonball.  Eyes nestled into her face, twinkling always.  She is Santa Clause, she is a fairy tale.  You didn’t know anyone like her.  You couldn’t. 

I can’t figure out what tense to use.  Because her light is so full of color, so vivid, I can’t let her be dead.  She is Sue, fresh baked bread, warm pub on a rainy day, your favorite mittens, crotcheted with heart strings long before you were born.  

How can those things die?

She was good, every salty inch of her.  She coached little league for a million years.  She wrote letters to the soldiers fighting in every war she was alive for.  She took care of us - you even - even though you didn’t know her, she took care of all of us, believing in the goodness of people.

She cleaned our house for 20 years and loved us still, amidst the grime and mess we hid (with her help) from the world.  She loved the stink and trash out of us.  A strong love, reliable.  

When I hear a car come up the driveway it won’t be her.  It won’t be her.  It won’t be Sue Russell, baseball zealot, coach, community organizer, fisherwoman, pot-smokin’ beer drinkin’ lover of the great outdoors, giver of everything she could…

But she isn’t gone.  Even her death can’t kill her.  Sue Russell - a Sunday afternoon, hot diner coffee, your grandmother’s worn quilt.  She had the wildness of a deer, loyalty of a dog, mouth of a sailor.

I am so lucky to have her with me.  I’m sad mostly because I wish you, all of you, had known her.  She brought such goodness to the world…and still does, I suppose, but it has to come through those of us who were graced with her proximity.  The goodness comes through her story and the way we can all giggle and rest inside it.  

…the comfy recliner, the cloud you can sit in.  Sue Russell, that wonderful, wonderful human.

Joe

You surprised me with your death.  I think about people dying a lot.  You were the perfect distance from these reflections.  I couldn’t imagine yours…not in a million years.   Once I watched and admired from the periphery, the support and inspiration you gave to the community.  Now I feel it.  I am more alive for it.  Somehow I feel closer to you, to the people grieving and celebrating your life. The pace is slower, the sky, a more generous blue.  You have colored my eyes like a child and polished my sense of wonder.

The last big memory:  Circus Center.  I climbed the fabric and there you were, in a little window.  Your face lit up and you ran down to meet me.  I descended too and ran toward you for a hug I knew would be good.  But it wasn’t just a hug.  You lifted me off the ground and spun me in circles.  The child in me was greeted with playful reverence.  Excited and nervous, like stumbling onto a loving carnival ride.  It was awkward for a moment when you put me down.  I wanted more and I didn’t know what to say.

Just like now.

You must know what I’m feeling.  You felt it so strongly…the longing to connect.  And so you offered the same to others - inspiration, support, a way of making each person feel important, beautiful, possible.  I took you for granted, as I do many people, places, experiences.  But your passing dissolves that too.

Your death becomes a perfect frame for your vivid and extraordinary life.  You make me want to pick people up, spin them around, treasure each set of wonder-filled eyes.  You hugged me as if it were the last time I would see you.  And indeed it was.  I’m so sorry I didn’t know it.  And I’m so grateful that it’s how you treated everyone.

Thank you Joe.  Thank you for that permanent reminder.  Never in my experience has there been such life in dying.  My heart hurts so badly and I’m grateful for that too.

She Won't Let Me Run Away

It happens before my period, a great build up before the release.  I admire them in her mirror.  There is a loveliness to the shiny skin, gently stretched with swelling.  A pink line runs over the top of each breast where my bathing suit ends.  I push them together to make impressive cleavage.  They are tender to touch.  Alex Trebek is in the next room, drowning out the sound of labored inhales.  

My aunt is dying.  She gasps for last breaths.  She has many last breaths.  Stress builds among family members as our love for her becomes louder and desperate.  My uncle drives me crazy.  Not really.  I drive myself crazy and use him as an excuse.  

I put on a shirt and return to my perch.  She holds on next to me.  To what?  Sometimes she will mumble, call out to her sister, sing a song from her childhood.  Otherwise, her triumphant body continues to sink into the bed. 

At first I wanted to be here for it, to heroically usher her through the transition.  I wanted to be strong for everyone.  Now the dying process tries my patience.  At first it seemed so beautiful, so real and honest.  After weeks of anticipation, our waiting has become rigid.  We built a dam to hold back our grief so that we are capable enough to get dressed and give her medicine.  Emotional constipation has us on edge.

Death, where are you?  She should go now.  This is her time. These are the words that crowd my head as I touch my living body, crave sandwiches, busyness, and the ocean on my skin.  They seem true, but they are thoughts arising out of exhaustion and an eagerness to experience something else.

Her lovely scent is still somehow alive in the home.  She dies with slow grace and fortitude.  She dies quietly, so that we can hear coverage of the presidential race, reruns of Jeopardy and episodes of Forensic Files. She softens our tension by waking from near death with important observations.  She sits up suddenly, wide-eyed and lucid after a long period of inert survival: “Donald Trump’s face must look like that because he has been eating too much pussy.”

We laugh and kiss her forehead and then return with her to the passing of languid hours. 

Despite the sweet moments, I don’t want to hear her or smell her or watch her endure pain anymore.

I fancy myself a lover of Death - the equalizer, humbler, reminder of impermanent perfection.  But Death isn’t all beautiful.  It tests composure.  How is she still alive when she hasn’t eaten in weeks and she is on enough morphine to sedate an elephant?

I am embarrassed in the face of Death.  I am embarrassed to feel frustrated.  To waste energy on ugly thoughts and interior grumbles.  I promise myself to be better, to grow beyond this childish irascibility.  I will be peaceful.

But this doesn’t happen immediately like I wish it would.  She won’t let me run away.  I can go into the bathroom, put on her makeup, make faces in her mirror, but I can’t escape myself.

Maybe Death is hiding under the bed.  Maybe he loves to watch human folly.  Maybe what he loves is giving us the opportunity to clean ourselves up before our individual journeys.  He likes a lighter load and this is his way of saying, “Look, here is all your baggage.  It’s going to be a heavy ride if you don’t put some of it down.”

But I don’t know how to do it.  I’m afraid.  And maybe, so is she.